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The Smart Tech ie |6|A p r i l 2 0 1 1

Contents -April 2011

[Technology] 28Say Hello to the new ‘ConsumerizedIT’ Workplace By Ambarish Deshpande, McAfee India

30Cloud Security Challenges in Secur-ing Enterprise Web 2.0 ApplicationsBy Abhay Bhargav, we45 Solutions India

[Top 100 B Schools ofIndia] 32

[Event] 38Siliconindia MAC Mumbai divestsan insight into Indian Mobile MarketBy Akanksha Ravindran

[Technology] 40The android ManiaBy Arvind Sharma, Longcheer India

[Event] 41SiliconIndia’s SoftTec Probes Deep intoIT TestingBy Akanksha Ravindran

42What Developers Should Or ShouldNot DoBy Anil Pochiraju, F5 Networks

[Technology] 44Cloud Computing’s Toughest Obstacle!By Amit Nath, Trend Micro

46Technology Play in Physical Safety andSecurityBy Rakesh Goyal, Cisco Systems

[Business] 48The Need for Disaster Recovery Man-agement Solutions in Indian BanksBy Lakshman Narayanaswamy, SanoviTechnologies

[Buyers Perspective] 50Betting High on the Enterprise Soft-ware Market

[Event] 51Marketing Strategies Galore at SiliconIndiaMarketing SymposiumBy Akanksha Ravindran

[Buyers Perspective]52Building Expertise in Specialized Tech-nology Offerings

[Event] 53200 HR Professionals come together @ Sili-con India HR SymposiumBy Akanksha Ravindran

54Women in Leadership: An InsightBy Akanksha Ravindran

[People Manager] 58Beyond Onboarding Integrating Peoplewith the Organization By C Mahalingam, Symphony Services

[Tech Products] 58

[Event] 62Understanding Web Apps at Siliconin-dia Web Apps Conference 2011By Akanksha Ravindran

[Guru Talk] 8In Pursuit of Excellence in TechnologyBy Naresh Shah, Novell

[In Focus] 10

[Tech Buzz] 14

[VC Talk] 16Now The Best Time to Start an InternetCompany in IndiaBy Suvir Sujan, Nexus Venture Partners

17Emerging Trend – Potential for IT Serv-ice Providers to Obtain PE / VC FundingBy Rajeev Srivastava, Basil Growth Fund

[Venture Beat] 18

[Technology] 24Roadmap for IP Based Surveillance Systemsin IndiaBy M.Girikrishna, Silvan Innovations Lab

26Overcome New Security Challenges withan Information-Centric ApproachBy Shantanu Ghosh, Symantec

Naresh Shah

Micro WorldTwo Decades

Securing Enterpisesof By Vimali Swamy

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The Smart Tech ie |9|A p r i l 2 0 1 1The Smart Tech ie |8|A p r i l 2 0 1 1

Technology leaders aroundthe world maintain a highstandard of technical com-petence along with diversityin their manpower. Organi-

zations today require managers withsound technical and managerial capabil-ities in IT, to keep pace with the evolvingindustry. Balancing the scales betweenleadership and technology is a dauntingtask for those aspiring to climb the seniormanagement ladder. Leadership usuallytakes precedence, partly because techni-cal insights become less critical as one

advances in their career. In India, the IT industry needs a fresh

brigade of technically sound people, nowmore than ever. One of the biggest chal-lenges the industry faces is the dire short-age of skilled professionals with verticaldomain expertise. And for us to stayahead of the value chain, we need togroom experts who are versatile withemerging technologies in this evolvingsegment.

On the bright side, India can boast ofa large pool of potential workforce insoftware development, testing, technical

support,and more How-

ever, India is found want-ing when it comes strategic and

innovation led solutions that drive thesector and this is mostly controlled by theWest.

Technical Ladder vs. Managerial Lad-derEngineers face a dilemma as they forge apath in their careers and are up against afork. One road leads up the technical lad-der and the other is the managerial lad-der. The rationale for choosing an optionis often influenced significantly by mythsand perceptions of the opportunitiesavailable in both paths.

Technical and managerial ladders areindeed very different career choices. Themanagerial ladder comes with a statussymbol, job responsibilities, and role ex-pectations which are much better under-stood and recognized by the society thanthe technical ladder.

By definition, technical depth impliesthat one has spent years developing ex-pertise in a domain and the skills may notbe easily transferable from one technicaljob to another. Also, the perceptionamong IT professionals is that a smallernumber of jobs are only available in thetechnical arena. This could be a factor forfewer professionals pursuing the techni-cal path. Nevertheless, there is a dearthof technical experts in the industry whohave chosen to remain individual con-tributors and can perform critical andhigh value chain tasks, like new productinnovation and product architecture.

Additionally, IT professionals aretypically impatient and job hopping has

The author is Managing Director, IDC & Vice President,Global Engineering Strategy, Novell

GURU TALK By Naresh Shah

become an industry norm. This, with ca-reer mobility and its related expectationsamong engineers are escalating at analarming rate. Young engineers are gener-ally interested in acquiring skills, learningabout the products they are working on,aspiring to take on greater responsibilities,and in the process improving their ownmarketability in the industry. But after justa few years, peer pressure, comparisons to“my college classmates”, questions fromthe family members and relatives, etc.drive many professionals to change jobs,often in a very different industry verticalthan their incumbent role. IT companiesalso need to share responsibility for thistrend in encouraging the job hopping cul-ture in India. When companies want togrow quickly, they offer premium salariesto attract talent. More than 90 percent ofIT professionals have probably changedjobs at least once in the last five years. Itis hard to develop deep technical knowl-edge in such situations as engineers movefrom job to job acquiring a ‘jack of alltrades, master of none’ reputation.

Dual career laddersare present in many or-ganizations. Al-though, in theory,people can movebetween both lad-ders, the switchis not as easy,and not an op-tion that many cansuit. As people move away from technol-ogy, their knowledge of a particular do-main diminishes, and the higher theyascend in the ranks, the lesser it gets.

Engineers’ DilemmaAssuming that an engineer has the ca-pability (which is not true for all engi-neers) to pursue both paths, here is thedilemma in choosing an option: themoney/prestige quotient vs. the pursuitof knowledge and vertical excellence.The money factor becomes a differen-tiator for the managerial ladder only ifone keeps rising successfully to seniormanagement roles. Many engineers be-

lieve, somewhat incorrectly, that therearen’t sufficient roles on the technicalside for the more experienced profes-sionals.

Cultural FactorsThe role of parents and relatives in shap-ing the careers of their loved ones alsoneeds to be examined. The Indian societytends to push people into more traditionaland proven professions. In the West, if ayoung daughter is passionately interestedin piano music or journalism, her parentswill let her pursue her dreams, and hopethat she will become a concert player or astar journalist. In India, parents typicallydiscourage their daughters from pursuingthe option of becoming a journalist or anentertainer and push her in to a “safe” ca-reer opportunity such as engineering ormedicine.

Generation after generation in our so-ciety has been raised to rationalize one’schoices in life by looking at the numberof opportunities available in an area and

then pursuing it. It is always rec-ommended to avail of the op-tions which present the largestand safest set of opportunities,rather than pursuing one’s pas-sions and dreams. Looking at itfrom a balanced perspective,this may make sense, but in-novation is not likely to mate-rialize unless there is apassionate heart pursuing it.

Leadership and TechnologyThe IT industry today has a number ofhighly respected individuals who have ex-celled at leading their companies to theheights of glory. There are examples ofsuccessful business leaders who followedthe technical stream, retaining their skillsand yet moved along the managerialstream. Look at the career progression ofBill Gates, Steve Jobs, Steve Ballmer, EricSchmidt and the latest sensation, TIMEmagazine’s 2010 person of the year MarcZuckerberg.

These competent leaders had verystrong technical ideals. Their expertise re-

mained intact despite them embracing themanagerial path. When a leader has reallystrong technical expertise, he/she canguide the organization in a new and vi-sionary direction through their skills andconviction.

The Way ForwardThe Indian IT industry will benefit withincreased innovation, creativity, and tech-nological advancement, only by individu-als pursuing their passion and by buildingstrong technical proficiency. Engineeringexcellence cannot be achieved without in-spiring employees to truly follow theirheart, which is the very reason why manyof them choose to pursue engineering inthe first place.

The task for leaders of technologycompanies in India today is to encourage,develop, and groom technically competentpeople who remain committed to technol-ogy. At the same time, managers, espe-cially younger managers, should continueto remain engaged and up-to-date withtechnological advances. This will increasethe organization’s capacity to forge aheadin the technology race. Technology isevolving at a fast pace, and for a leader toenvisage the future IT roadmap of the or-ganization, demands honing strong tech-nical skills while picking up several othersoft skills such as people management,communication, leadership, and more

Engineers in turn need to rise to thechallenge and pursue a career in technicalcompetence. And needless to state, thesespecialists are bound to have many moreopportunities with greater rewards beingoffered to them in the technical arena.

The new era beckons people to stepforward, to defy norms and bridge thegap in the IT industry. India can stopresting on its laurels of product develop-ment and execution and truly move intoa new realm by building impetus to-wards product conceptualization and fu-turistic technologies.

Excellence Technologyin

ofInPursuit

Naresh Shah

�e number one benefit of informationtechnology is that it empowers people todo what they want to do. It lets people becreative. It lets people be productive. Itlets people learn things they didn'tthink they could learn before, and soin a sense it is all about poten-tial. Steve Ballmer

�e technology at theleading edge changes so

rapidly that you have to keepcurrent a!er you get out of

school. I think probably the mostimportant thing is having good fun-

damentals. Gordon Moore

“When you innovate, you've got to be preparedfor everyone telling you you're nuts” Larry Ellison


inin

The Indian ecommerce in-dustry is expected togrow by 47 percent and

touch Rs 46,520 crore by end of2011. This was indicated in astudy by the Internet and Mo-bile Association of India(IAMAI). The report said thatthe market which was at Rs8,146 crores in 2007 came along way from there andreached an estimated Rs 31,598crores by 2010. The report also pointsout that it is the online travel industrythat is leading the market. The onlinetravel industry was Rs 6250 crores in2007 contributing about 77 percent ofthe industry then. In December 2010this industry stood at Rs 25,258 crores,about 80 percent of the total ecom-

merce market and is expected to growto Rs 37890 crores by December 2011.

As of 2009, second to online travelcomes eTailing with 7.82 percentshare which equals to Rs 1,550 crores.In eTailing, computers and computerperipherals account for Rs 560.52crores while cameras, mobiles and

MP3 players contribute Rs 389 crores.Other major contributors to net com-merce include online classifieds (jobs,online matrimonial, cars, real estateand others), buying movie tickets,food delivery and gaming subscriptionis estimated to be Rs 1,210 crores. Fi-nancial service transactions over theInternet comprise nearly 7.8 percent ofthe market size, which is about Rs1,540 crores.

According to the report Indian on-line users have exhibited willingnessto make purchases over the Internetand this attributes to the growth in netcommerce industry. Given the increas-ing awareness and acknowledgement,the overall industry is set to experiencea high growth in the next couple ofyears.

Many Indians and Indo-Americans are included inthe list of Young Global

Leaders for 2011. The list by theWorld Economic Forum consists of190 individuals from 65 countries.According to the forum, the peoplewho received the Young GlobalLeaders award received it for theirprofessional accomplishments, com-mitment to society and potential tocontribute to shaping the future ofthe world.

The list includes Indo-Americanpersonalities like Nikki Haley, SouthCarolina Governor; Vivek Kundra,U.S. Chief Information Officer; Gita

Gopinath, Harvard University eco-nomics Professor; Sandeep Chatter-jee, SourceTrace SystemsCo-Founder; and Saleem Ali, Univer-sity of Vermont environmental stud-ies Professor. Indians like, Membersof Parliament Meenakshi Natarajanand Deepender Singh Hooda; Oci-mum Biosolutions Founder and CEOAnuradha Acharya; Sanjay Chandra,Managing Director of real estate firmUnitech; Priya Hiranandani-Van-drevala, Hirco Group Founder andCo-Chairman; Manish Khera, Finan-cial Inclusion Network and Opera-tions CEO; Chetan Maini, MahindraReva Deputy Chairman and CTO;

Shaffi Mather, Ambulance Access forAll Co-Founder; RamakarthikeyanSrikrishna, founding Partner andHead, global strategy, sales infra-structure, HCL Technologies; andBhavin Turakhia, CEO at Web prod-ucts marketing company Directi, arealso part of the list.

The 2011 honorees will now bepart of a broader forum of 668 YoungGlobal Leaders worldwide. They willparticipate in World EconomicForum’s events, including its annualmeeting in Davos, Switzerland, theannual meeting of the New Champi-ons in China, and the forum's regionalmeetings worldwide.

University of Buffalo’s ProvostSatish K. Tripathi is recom-mended by Chancellor Nancy

L. Zimpher of the State University ofNew York as the next president of theuniversity. It would make Dr. Tri-pathi, UB's 15th president and thefirst born outside the United Statesand leader of the largest public uni-versity in the state during what's con-sidered a critical time in its history.

Tripathi is an internationallyrecognized computer scientist whojoined UB as Provost - the univer-sity's chief academic officer on the1st of July, 2004, after serving asdean of the Bourns College of Engi-neering at the University of Califor-nia, Riverside. This opportunity willmake him, who was born in the vil-lage Patna of Uttar Pradesh, the firstIndian American to head a ResearchUniversity which is a part of the

American Associationof Universities.

Chancellor Zim-pher has requested theState University ofNew York Board ofTrustees to convene aspecial meeting inApril in Buffalo to for-mally consider Tri-pathi's appointmentfor the post. She alsonamed Tripathi asUB's officer-in-charge, effective im-mediately, with all ofthe responsibilities and authority of acampus president. Tripathi said “Itwould be my distinct privilege to leadour remarkable university, which isrecognized for its tradition of excel-lence and has an extraordinary futureahead.”

Speaking at the oc-casion, Chancellor Zim-pher said, "It is my greatpleasure to recommendDr. Satish Tripathi as thenext president of theUniversity at Buffalo.Dr. Tripathi's interna-tional reputation as anaccomplished re-searcher and transfor-mative leader in highereducation makes himideally suited for thispost. Public researchuniversities like UB

provide access to high quality, af-fordable education and engage in re-search that helps build vibrantcommunities at home and across theglobe. Dr. Tripathi will provide out-standing leadership for UB as it car-ries out this important mission."

In a bid to provide advice on im-plementing best business prac-tices on matters related to federal

government management and opera-tion, the President's Management Ad-visory Board was established byExecutive Order on the 19th of April,2010. The board gives advice with aparticular focus on productivity, theapplication of technology, and cus-tomer service. President BarackObama recently appointed AdobeSystems CEO Shantanu Narayen as a

member in this Board.Narayen holds a bachelor's de-

gree in electronics engineering fromOsmania University in India and gothis MBA from the Haas School ofBusiness of the University of Cali-fornia, Berkeley in 1993. He alsoholds a master's degree in ComputerScience from Bowling Green StateUniversity in Bowling Green, Ohio.Prior to taking the post of CEO ofAdobe he was the President and COOof the company.

Shantanu Narayen is now a member ofPresident's Management Advisory

University of Buffalo gets its firstIndo-American President

Many Indians gain position in the YoungGlobal Leaders list

Net commerce in India to reach Rs 46,520 crores in 2011

Shantanu Narayen

Satish K. Tripathi


in

Two Indian-origin professors areamong the four to have beennamed 2011 MacVicar Faculty

Fellows for their outstanding under-graduate teaching, mentoring and ed-ucational innovation at MassachusettsInstitute of Technology (MIT). Bish-wapriya (Bish) Sanyal of the Depart-ment of Urban Studies and Planning;and George Verghese of the Depart-ment of Electrical Engineering andComputer Science were honoredalong with Christopher Schuh of theDepartment of Materials Science andEngineering; and Patrick Winston, ofthe Department of Electrical Engi-neering and Computer Science.

Bishwapriya Sanyal, who re-

ceived his PhD in urban and regionalplanning from the University of Cali-fornia at Los Angeles, joined the MITas a faculty in 1984 and served as thehead of the Department of UrbanStudies and Planning from 1994 to2002 and chaired the MIT facultyfrom 2007 to 2009. Sanyal, currentlythe Ford International Professor ofUrban Development and Planning,also directs the SPURS/HubertHumphrey program at MIT for mid-career professionals.

George Verghese is a professorof electrical engineering and has beenpart of the MIT faculty since 1979. Hereceived his B Tech from the IndianInstitute of Technology, Madras in

1974; his MS from the State Univer-sity of New York, Stony Brook in1975; and his PhD from Stanford Uni-versity in 1979, all in electrical engi-neering.

“It is certainly in the spirit ofMargaret MacVicar's commitment tostudents that we award these presti-gious fellowships and recognise thecreative efforts of MIT's outstandingteachers. This year's fellows aredeeply committed advisors and men-tors, they have led important curricu-lum changes and made significantcontributions to programs in studentlife,” MIT Provost L Rafael Reif saidduring a reception at Gray House.

MIT honors Two Indian American pro-fessors

Ateam at Sao Paulo State Uni-versity in Brazil claims tohave developed a more ef-

fective way to use fiber from plantsto make a new generation of auto-motive plastics. The fibers thatcome from delicate fruits like ba-nanas and pineapples will make theplastic stronger, lighter, and moreeco-friendly than plastics in use saysteam leader Alcides Leao.

Some of these nano-cellulosefibers are almost as stiff as Kevlar,which is used to make armor and

bulletproof vests. Kevlar and otherplastics which are made from pe-troleum are not eco friendly,whereas the nano-cellulose fibersare. “The properties of these plas-tics are incredible. They are light,but very strong, 30 percent lighterand 3-4 times stronger than plastic.We believe that a lot of car parts, in-cluding dashboards, bumpers, sidepanels, will be made of nano-sizedfruit fibers in the future. For onething, they will help reduce theweight of cars and that will improve

fuel economy,” says Leao.He added that nano-cellulose re-

inforced plastics also have mechan-ical advantages over conventionalauto- motive plastics, which includemore resistance to damage fromheat, spilled gasoline, water, andoxygen.

Green Cars from Fruitsare in the Making

April 9, 2011New Delhi

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Delhi on April 9th, 2011.

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Social game developer Zyngalaunched their Zynga Studio-1 inBangalore. This is the largest ZyngaStudio outside the U.S. This studiowill develop new game mechanics

and will focus on innovative gamedevelopment to create new features.This studio will also engage in fulllife-cycle game development. Zyngastudio is famous around world for its

games such as CitiVille, FarmVille,MafiaWars, YoVille and FishVille.

Zinga India will recruit engi-neers, product managers, game de-signers, artist, and senior managersto support this expansion program.“With the launch of Studio-I, we areexpanding our capabilities to lever-age the amount of creative talentbased in India for new featureswithin Zynga’s popular games,” saysShan Kadavil, Zynga’s India man-ager.

The Studio also plans to doublethe headcount in India during 2011.“We are looking for more peoplewith an entrepreneurial drive com-bined with engineering and artisticskills to join our excisting and grow-ing teams,” says Kadavil. “In onlyone year, India has made exciting ad-vancements in technology that havetruly improved efficiency for the en-tire company,” he added.


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NVIDIA launched their new graphics processor unit(GPU) the GeForce GTX 550 Ti. “The GTX 550 Tipaired with our 3D Vision technology provides gamerswith an amazing low-cost platform that delivers anawesome immersive experience,” said Drew Henry,general manager of GeForce GPU business atNVIDIA. “As the leader in PC gaming hardware, weare excited about the future of PC gaming and how wecan make those experiences as immersive as possible,”he added.

The GTX 550 Ti is the latest in NVIDIA’s Fermiline of consumer GPUs. The company claims that theGTX 550 Ti delivers the fastest performance in itsclass for DX11 games, compared with the closestcompetitive product; it is up to 50 percent faster intoday’s newest DX11 tessellated games, and 38 per-cent faster in previous-generation DX9 and DX10games.

The GTX 550 Ti is available with most of the add-incard partners, including, ASUS, Gainward, Galaxy, Lead-tek, MSI, Palit, Point of View, Sparkle and Zotac.

Compiled By Hari Anil

SAP with its New Car Policy Encourages its Employees to Go Green

SAP Labs India launched a unique andcompelling car policy to encourage itsemployees to Go Green, which willpropel the company towards its sus-tainability vision. In collaboration withMahindra Reva the company is pro-viding an opportunity for employees toown and operate electric cars at a min-imum cost. The offer for the employ-ees include an attractive monthly cashincentive and benefits such as freecharging points, reserved parkingspace and routine maintenance andservice.

VR Ferose, Managing Director,SAP Labs India and Chetan Maini,Chief of Strategy and Technology,Mahindra Reva Electric Vehicleshanded over the first batch of elec-tronic cars to four employees. SAPLabs Green Car Policy is in line with“Future Fleet”, a global research pro-gram initiated by SAP AG to test theuse of electric vehicles powered by en-

ergy generated exclusively from re-newable sources. SAP Labs India isaiming to be the largest contributor tothis initiative with its lineup of 35 elec-tric cars.

“We expect this forward-lookingpolicy packed with attractive incen-tives to provide the initial thrust to ouremployees to choose electric cars overthose powered by fossil fuels. I thankour employees and partners who havetaken the first step in our global jour-ney to reduce energy use,” says Fer-ose. “We congratulate SAP Labs onimplementing a path breaking policyfor adoption of emission free cars.SAP Labs has shown the way forwardto the corporate sector with their pio-neering efforts by including their em-ployees and partners in this initiative,”added Maini. As part of the policyMahindra REVA will extend the war-ranty and servicing period to 36months against its standard 24 months.

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Financial software testing company Thinksoft Global Serv-ices opened a new sales office cum delivery centre at And-heri, Mumbai, to expand regional presence and also expandclientele in the financial capital. The company had recentlyexpanded its India infrastructure by adding Delivery centersin Bangalore and Chennai. The office in Mumbai is in-tended to help them strengthen their regional presence andserve their local clients with greater efficiency.

“In India, there are mega plans as the BFSI sector in thecountry is yet to exploit the potential of IT deployment. Asa result, IT budgets are only going to increase over the yearsas many organizations will have to go in for large imple-mentation of information systems. We hope to be preparedto capitalize on these coming opportunities,” saysA.V.Asvini Kumar, Managing Director, Thinksoft GlobalServices.

The company which is listed in the National and Bom-bay Stock Exchanges specializes in helping Global Finan-cial sector firms to improve the quality of their applications,software and systems. They help their clients to narrowtimelines and reduce software product life cycle costs.

Xilinx unveiled industry’s first Extensi-ble Processing Platform (EPP) the Zynq-7000 family in India. Xilinx claims thisseries will achieve the levels of process-ing and compute performance requiredin high-end embedded applications inmarkets such as video surveillance, au-tomotive driver assistance, factory au-tomation, and many others. Supportedby a vast ecosystem of tools and IPproviders, the Zynq-7000 family tightlyintegrates a complete ARM(R) Cor-tex(TM)-A9 MPCore(TM) processor-based system with 28nm, low-powerprogrammable logic for system archi-tects and embedded software developersto extend, customize, optimize, and dif-ferentiate their systems.

Each Zynq-7000 EPP device is builtwith an ARM dual-core Cortex-A9 MP-Core processing system with NEON andDouble Precision Floating Point enginesthat is fully integrated and hardwired,and includes L1 and L2 caches, memorycontrollers, and commonly used periph-erals.

“Our Zynq-7000 family offers de-signers a comprehensive platform thatenables them to create their own cus-tomized standard products that scalefrom very cost- and power-effective so-lutions based on the capabilities of theArtix-7 FPGA family, to more compre-hensive and performance-oriented solu-tions on the higher end with devicesbased on the Kintex-7 family,” said VinRatford, Senior Vice President, World-wide Marketing and Business Develop-ment at Xilinx. Application developerscan take advantage of the programmablelogic’s massive parallel processing tohandle large amounts of data across awide range of signal processing applica-tions, as well as extend the features of theprocessing system by implementing ad-ditional peripherals.

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The decade of the internet inIndia has arrived, approxi-mately 60 – 80 million Indi-ans use internet, of which 20million are in social net-

works like orkut and Facebook, and turnsover a huge $ 1 Billion in terms of onlinetransaction. While home broadband isslowly increasing, there is a fair bit ofbroadband in the office and cybercafés.With wireless broadband hopefullyaround the corner and the 3G rollout, in-ternet will be pervasive in this country.

The country right now is goingthrough gaining critical marks in the in-ternet. Many of the internet applicationsacross content community and commercewhich should have been created in the2000s but were not created because of thedotcom bust are being created now. Web1.0 is migrating into other areas such asregular e-commerce. People are now com-ing out with entrepreneur ideas to do whatevery country in the internet space hasgone through, which is basic content forthe country, basic commerce for the coun-try and basic community for the country.There is a very strong need for ecommerceacross almost any vertical, both on the b2cand b2b spectrum. Travel has proven thepropensity of Indians to transact online.Ecommerce players that will control the

last mile customer experience like ware-housing, logistics and payments will win.

We are still trying to figure out whatthe trends are. But one future trend for surewill be finding ways to socialize the mo-bile phone which actually hadn’t hap-pened yet. Now there is no need forvernacular communities in the country asall the users of Facebook and orkut areEnglish speakers, but when the socializa-tion of mobile internet happens, since mo-bile penetration in India is much higher,then vernacular communities will make abig difference. It is very early for vernac-ular communities now, but I do expect inthe next 24 months there will be some crit-ical mass in this area and entrepreneurswill come out with plans for the commu-nity area.

There are also two global trends thatare coming to India; mobility and video.Despite of bandwidth problems and lowbroadband penetration YouTube remainsto be among the top sites in India. I thinkall kinds of applications in video and mo-bility will take off in this fashion. We havealready invested in a company calledVdopia, which is basically a video addsnetwork that monetizes video streamsacross mobile and the internet and we arelooking for further investments in thevideo and mobility area.

The biggest challenge that an Internetcompany might face in India will be com-petition. The barrier for entry into the in-ternet space in India is very low presentlyand as a result so many entrepreneurscoming up with internet ideas. To survivethis you need to have a lasting power andstaying power and the only way you canget this is by raising a substantial capital.If you have an idea launching it quickly isvery important, but make sure you haveenough capital to back you because itmight take over a year to figure out thebusiness model and may be even longer,still he luxury of waiting is absent becausethe competition would come an eat intoyour margins. So the challenges are whichcompanies can attract capital investors tofinance their business and then figure outtheir business model over time.

Out of, may be, a 1000 entrepreneurswith internet startup ideas about half adozen to a dozen are getting VC fundingevery quarter. The key is to convince theinvestor that you can execute this idea thebest. When facing an investor the focusshould be on the team and it has to go be-yond just having an engineer on yourteam. Talk about who you got and why,figure out what your go to market strategyis and why you will succeed in this cutthroat internet environment where therecan be 10,000 other players.

Then the second part is you have tostart thinking big. You cannot go to an in-vestor and say I am going to do some-thing that will be a small business in fiveyears. The ability to think big is impor-tant because venture capital and angel in-vestor guys would go on taking the riskearly and invest in a company that hashuge potential to grow big. Think abouthow big you can make your companyand target huge markets. Convince theinvestors that this company can becomevery large and this is the right team toback it. These are the two main questionswe always ask ourselves.

My advice to entrepreneurs is thatthere is no better time to start an internetcompany in India than now!


The BesT Time To sTarT aNiNTerNeT CompaNy iN iNdiaNow

The author is Co-Founder, Nexus Venture Partners

VC TALK By Suvir Sujan

The author is Managing Partner, Basil Growth Fund

VC TALK By Rajeev Srivastava

Suvir SujanAccording to Gartner,

global IT Servicespending in 2010 wasapproximately $800 bil-lion but there seem to

be very few, if any, PE / VC firms thatinvest into IT Service providers. Thefocus of any PE / VC company is toensure a huge upside for its investorsand the only way to ensure the same isto invest into an IT product companythat would become the next “block-buster” product. The tremendous suc-cess of a winning product ensures thatthere is a huge non-linear / exponen-tial growth to both the top-line andbottom-line, critical to driving hugevaluations.

IT Service providers are very de-pendent on strong hiring and trainingengine to drive the growth of the com-pany, as the revenue growth is tightlycoupled to the staff strength. Acquir-ing & retaining quality staff is a hugechallenge that most of the IT majorshave been trying to overcome. Thislends unpredictability to the growth ofthe service provider - a major deterrentto obtaining investments fromPE / VC firms. Other im-portant factors thatdrive valuations aredifferentiated serviceline, offshore and on-shore mix, growthmodel, and more.

With global enter-prises looking to reducethe Total Cost of Owner-ship of their IT assets, theyare seeking alternatives toexisting IT strategies. As aresult, we are seeing an in-

creasing interest in adoption of SaaS,Cloud Computing and Open Sourcetechnologies that are likely to increasethe role of the IT Service providers.Gartner, in their report, ‘Gartner Pre-dicts 2011’, highlighted that by 2015,tools and automation will eliminate 25percent of labour hours associatedwith IT services. Clearly, the success-ful IT Service providers of tomorrowwould be the ones that provide valueto their clients using a mix of pure playservices with accelerators that reducethe time to adopt / deploy new solu-tions.

Another challenge for small andmid-sized IT Service providers is the“plateau” effect. Very few IT Services

companies have beenable to cross thechasm to becom-ing a great “big”provider of nicheservices. Thechallenges facedby the promotersvary across: lack ofprofessional manage-

ment, constantworry on

working capital, lack of access to agroup of advisors who could be thesounding board with skin in the gamegeographical spread size of companyto provide confidence to major enter-prises to entrust key projects

We, at Basil, see a tremendouspotential in providing growth capitalto IT Service providers that have avery focussed and niche offeringwith a proven business model thathas a potential to scale. Our experi-ence with this model has convincedus that gone are the days when onecould create huge organisations pro-viding generic IT Services (thiswould have been relevant in the 80sand 90s). The need of the hour forCIOs is a partner that is best fit andsolves a very specific problem forthem — someone who they couldtrust completely to solve the prob-lem at the earliest, as opposed toeventually. Open Source, Cloud &RIM, Identity & Access Manage-ment, Enterprise Mobility, Inte-grated Customer InteractionManagement are some of the nicheareas where we see tremendous op-portunity for IT Service providers tocompete on a level-playing fieldwith the IT majors.

Our advice to promoters seekinginvestment would be to ensure youhave a differentiated, niche offeringwith accelerators to provide value toyour clients. Prior to aligning with aPE / VC, ensure you interact with thepartners in the fund and their past in-vestments to understand their value-add across Strategy, Sales &Marketing, Finance & Administra-tion and HR & Recruitment.

Emerging Trend – Potential for IT ServiceProviders to Obtain PE / VC Funding

Rajeev Srivastava


Compiled by ST Team

BankBazaar.com, an onlineprovider of customized ratequotes on loans and insurance

products, raised `26.7 crore in a Se-ries A round lead by Walden Interna-tional. The company which istargeting the growing Indian Internetsavvy consumers is planning to usethis fund to increase their offeringsand to improve their customer reach.

“We will also leverage this invest-ment to grow our world class team offinancial services and technology tal-ent. The opportunity to fundamentallyshape financial services delivery inIndia lies ahead of us and we willbring on board the best talent globally

to drive this change,” says AdhilShetty, CEO, BankBazaar.com.

BankBazaar, while operating inthe $1 billion market, has partneredwith banks like HDFC, Axis Bank,Standard Chartered, Deutsche Bank,ING, Kotak Mahindra, and ICICIBank to offer real time interest ratequotes and approvals on loans. “Com-petition operates on a lead referralmodel which involves intrusive call-ing from call centers to consumers’cell phones to sell loans. BankBazaaroffers real time integration and ratequotes in a non intrusive process,”adds Shetty while talking about thecompetition.

E-commerce firm Myntra.comraised `62.3 crore in its secondround of funding led by Tiger

Global. Its existing investors IDGVentures and IndoUS Venture Part-ners also participated in this round offunding. This round brought the totalfunding raised by Myntra to `84.6crore. The funding will be used to in-vest in technology, logistics, supplychain and marketing.

Following consumer demand formore items, Myntra is in the processof repositioning itself as a lifestyleportal. “Customers have been askingfor new things to purchase. Personal-ization is a niche market and we de-cided we need to go mainstream,”says Mukesh Bansal, Co-founder &CEO, Myntra. “We have been grow-

ing very fast.Last financial year, wegrew 200 percent and this year we aretargeting a 3x growth. In the nextthree years, we want to be a $100 mil-lion company,” he added.

It will continue to offer personal-ization to users, but the priority willbe on lifestyle and casual fashionbrands such as Lee, Nike and Reebok.The cricket world cup season provedto be a blessing to Myntra, with over50 percent of the average 1,000 trans-actions it is registering per day beingsportswear. Founded in 2007 byIITians - Mukesh Bansal, AshutoshLawania and Vineet Saxena, Myntraclaims to have 500,000 registeredusers and a reach of 9,000 cities andtowns in India. It also ships to 40countries globally.

Myntra.com raises `62 Crore in SeriesB Funding

K12 Techno ServiceRaises `25 CroreFunding

K12 Techno Services, a Hyder-abad based, education serviceprovider, raised `25 crore

from SequoiaCapital in its sec-ond round offunding. Thefunds will be uti-lized to bring 25schools inAndhra Pradesh.Venkatnarayana, Managing Director,K 12 Techno Services says “With the`25 crore, we expect to add 25-30more schools across the AndhraPradesh in 2011-12, primarily to havecomputer and language labs, AbacusMathematics facilities and the like.”K-12 Techno Services is a school man-agement company which managesover 70 affordable English-mediumschools run by 15 different trusts underthe Gowtham Model School brand. Italso runs an International school brandthe ‘Orchids’.

The company’s services includecurriculum development, infrastruc-ture development, pre-school manage-ment, teacher training, and marketingsolutions to educational trusts, theyhave also partnered with CfBT UK andBrilliant Tutorials for spoken Englishand IIT training.

Last year Sequoia Capital alongwith Song Investment, funded the firstround of `70 crore in K12. Followingthe first round, Sequoia’s KP Balarajand Ravishankar GV and Song Advi-sors’ Vishal Vasishth joined the boardof K12 Techno.

BankBazar.com Raises `̀27 crore in Series A

Adhil Shetty

Venkatnarayana

April 16MUMBAI

Silver Sponsor

Gold Sponsors

SpeakersJohn SoliveresManaging Director and Co-founder, Quick Report Software

Naveen PrabhuIT solutions Manager, Tiara Consulting Services

Yogesh BhattPrincipal Technology Architect, Infosys

43112195


“More than 12 banks had been phishedin the past few years in India includingICICI and Bank of India. This is really amatter of concern. And that’s why secu-rity solutions enjoy maximum priority inthe IT investments of companies. Ac-cording to Gartner, the total size of thesecurity market is worth Rs.650 croreand capitalization has been only Rs.300crore. And this is the opportunity wewant to tap in,” says Govind Rama-murthy, CEO and Managing Director ofMicroWorld Technologies. Thus thecompany finds itself in a sweet spot bybeing a prominent player in advanced se-curity solution specializing in AntiVirus,AntiSpam, Content Security and Net-work Intrusion Prevention solutions.

Founded in 1993, Mumbai head-quartered Microworld, in the last decadeshas grown leaps and bounds, thwartedthe competition and sealed its position inthe antivirus front nationally as well asinternationally. With its prime product

eScan, the company has reached out tonot only large enterprises but also SMBsand individuals across Tier 1, 2, and 3cities.

Securing the Individuals, Enterprisesand SMBs alikeUnlike the IT industry, the awareness forneed of network security has been com-paratively lower in SMEs/SMBs. Whilemost large enterprises have embraced ITsecurity as a part of the corporate culture,many small and medium-size enterprises(SMEs) have been as unguarded assmall-town residents who keep theirdoors and windows unlocked. Similarwas the case with Crompton Greaves, apioneer in the management and applica-tion of electrical energy with a diverseportfolio of products for both industrialand consumer segment. To meet highquality standards and to ensure cus-tomers receive the best in class, the com-pany had been aggressively investing in

R&D, product certifications, productquality, productivity enhancement andoperational excellence. For long it did notsee the need for a strong security solutionbut with the increasing rise of threats/malware, there came a dire need of hav-ing a highly secure network.

The need to secure all endpoints andmaintain logs on files accessed/trans-ferred to USB based devices was of ut-most importance as information breachwas not an option. Moreover, with the in-creasing number of machines, adminis-trators needed a visual description thatwould help analyze the deployment sta-tus and protection status of all PCs withinthe network. In addition, installation hadto be done without a break in workflowand without disrupting business continu-ity. It required a security solution that notonly provided end to end secured net-work but also provided faster scanspeeds, better detection rates of new gen-eration malware along with effective re-

Micro WorldTwo Decades

Securing Enterpisesof By Vimali Swamy

We are in an era where the amount of data being churned out is increasing multifold incorporate environment, thanks to undisputed connectivity of social networks and mo-bility devices like smartphones and tablets. The very structure of work environment isundergoing rapid change with workforces going mobile and accessing corporate net-work from remote locations with VPN and other devices. As these changes take place,

hackers are also redesigning their tactics to target these networks. Today phishing and spam contin-ues to increase on social/corporate networks as users migrate large portions of their Internet activitysuch as e-mail to these properties. Moreover in this era of mobile workforce, while it is of necessity thatmobility devices be given access to company’s network, it is quiet a challenge to monitor every devicethat connects to the network and what information transacts.

COVER STORY



developed MailScan for more than 32different types of mail servers and isavailable on both Linux and Windowsplatforms. It also developed customizedsolutions for different kinds of mailservers. “For tackling Spam and Phish-ing, MicroWorld employs a unique tech-nology named Non Intrusive LearningPatterns (NILP). This adaptive mecha-nism can analyze each email accordingto the Behavioral Patterns of the user andcan take an informed decision thereafter,” Rammurthy explicates. Today theproducts from MicroWorld have passedseveral rigorous tests conducted by re-puted, and independent evaluators of thesecurity industry.

Recently, the company has releaseda new version of MailScan range of An-tiVirus, Anti-Spam and Content Securitysolution for Mail Servers – MailScan 6.1and eScan Version 11 for corporate use.Employing an array of intelligent filtersand equipped with artificial intelligencebased NILP technology, the product of-fers protection against Virus, Spam andPhishing mails along with comprehen-sive content Security, claims the com-pany.

“At a time when more and more mis-sion critical operations are fast movingon to web based models and emails be-coming the lifeline of businesses, com-prehensive protection for Enterprisesbecomes the key to Business Continuityand Operational Stability,” says Rama-murthy. The company is well on the trackto consistently deliver Security Solutionsthat one can rely on, by continuously im-provising and innovating its Technologyand Solutions. “You always go the extramile and no matter how it seems, Igreatly appreciate you”—Needless tomention, this is what most of the cus-tomers’ say on MicroWorld’s products.

Securing its footprint globallyWhen the company started, the Indianantivirus industry especially the SMBsegment was not as evolved as it is today.Every assembler or every small systemintegrator (SI) was selling hardware with

free antivirus. So, clients were not readyto pay for antivirus. But the company un-derstood that the scenario internationallywas completely different. This instigatedit to focus on the international market.The company went ahead and started itsoperations in the US and since then hassubsequently expanded its footprints inGermany, Malaysia and South Africa,penetrating the world market. Today, ithas its presence in more than 90 coun-tries and the software is available in morethan 16 languages.

Thought the company was not veryaggressive on the domestic market, sincelast five years, there has been tremendousactivity. Today with the increased aware-ness of IT across all sectors, India has be-come a prime market. “People havestarted using Internet to a large extent.With Internet threats creeping in, peoplehave realized the importance of antivirusand security. Thus, we have started build-ing up the channel and channel confi-dence and today have large teamfocusing here,” Rammurthy explains.He feels that the company’s biggeststrength nationally and internationally isthe technology, followed by its ability tocustomize product as per the marketneeds. It is essentially focused on part-ner-driven sales, emphasizing increasingits engagement with channel partners andresellers. The company recently rolledout 26-city road show to cover all themajor towns of India, including metros,A-class and few B-class towns.

What is next?MicroWorld as an ISV (IndependentSoftware Vendor) is part of the partnerprogramme of major software and hard-ware giants, such as Microsoft, Intel,IBM Corporation, Citrix, Suse Linux andRed Hat, amongst others. It works in tan-dem with them to ensure that Mi-croWorld’s products providecomprehensive protection to all systemsrunning these platforms and solutions.

The company also has a range ofOEM and customized Information Secu-rity solutions for companies interested inlicensing its technologies. There are threetypes of OEM opportunities available forcompanies interested in becoming Mi-croWorld’s OEM partners—Re-Brand-ing, Co-Branding and Bundling. Some ofthe OEM partners include HardwareManufacturers, Software Developers,UTM Vendors, Networking Vendors,Email Gateway and Proxy Server Man-ufacturers, Distributors and ISPs.

Continuing with its legacy of inno-vating and tapping potential market andopportunities, MicroWorld is currently inthe phase of launching several new prod-ucts over the next three months. For cor-porate and SMBs, it recently launchedeScan version 11 which has enhancedfeatures and is extremely userfriendly. The company also introducedeScan remote support for customersthrough which it can remotely connect tothe customer’s computer and providesupport immediately. The company willshortly launch the eScan version for mo-bile phones, Mac systems and other An-droid-based devices. “Smartphone is thenext big thing in corporate environmentand we hope to tap this opportunity im-mensely. Followed by Android, we willlaunch products for Blackberry and otherOS,” says Rammurthy.

Today, 300 people strong and a vastfootprint across all segments, the way thecompany is accelerating it hopes to crossthe Rs.100 crore mark soon.With its con-sistent growth over the years as a testi-monial, this target does not seemfarfetched to achieve.

moval of known/unknown malware.From the myriad of products flood-

ing the market, Crompton Greaves de-cided to deploy the corporate version ofeScan. It was a perfect match as eScanused whitelisting and cache technologiesthat enabled faster scans and did not im-pact the performance of the managedclients apart providing from end to endsecurity.

eScan implements a web based con-sole that allowed administrators to se-curely login to the eScan managementconsole from anywhere within the net-work using a browser. Using this newlyimplemented feature administrators candeploy and manage endpoints at remotelocations; eliminating the need to physi-cally attend individual machines. To fur-ther enhance client side deployment,eScan Web Console features a Clientdownload link. This allows administra-tors to deploy and setup the client directlyfrom the web console, ruling out the needto carry the installation file. In additionto this, the client setup file comes em-bedded with the server IP address, elim-inating the need to manually enter the IPaddress of the server during client instal-lation. Furthermore, client issues couldnow be resolved in a matter of minutesas administrators could now remotelyconnect to the desired machine and trou-bleshoot.

The automatic reporting feature helpsadministrators to generate a more de-tailed report of all managed computerswithin the network. In addition, the nec-essary reports can be mailed as and whenthey were generated, allowing networkadministrators to review only machinesthat are of importance. Furthermore, theimplementation of the dashboard al-lowed administrators to view the de-ployment and protection status of allmachines managed by the eScan Man-agement Console. Using the dashboard,network administrators can not onlyview the overall status of the clients butalso view the group they were currentlyassigned to. This not only allows networkaudits to be carried out with ease but also

helps in deploying additional eScanclients when needed.

Furthermore, the default settings ofthe Antivirus and Endpoint security mod-ule are sufficient enough to keep all man-aged machines safe and secure frommalware. Having said that, with endpointsecurity (EPS) enabled and by imple-menting the necessary policies, adminis-trators can block applications fromrunning and also put a curb on data theftby restricting usage of external drive. Inaddition EPS also maintains a log on allfiles that were modified and transferredto otherwise whitelisted drives.

Apart from the comprehensive nextgeneration security, eScan also allowsadministrators to quickly secure and de-ploy machines on the network. With theimplementation of the dashboard net-work administrators can review the over-all status of all connected machines. Inaddition to gaining insight into applica-tion usage of clients, administrators caneasily set policies to specific clients withease.

Having deployed eScan for fiveyears now, Shirish Pai, Senior Manager(IT), Crompton Greaves, is extremelypleased with the products performance

and stability. “We have been satisfiedwith eScan as a security solution inCrompton Greaves Ltd. It has been in-stalled for more than 5 years and hasworked flawlessly. The software hasevolved with time and various new fea-tures have been added to tackle newthreats in the wild. A special mentionabout the support team – they were quickand efficient to resolve the initial issuesas well as the small teething issues witheScan. They are proactive and even gooff the track to provide solutions for anysecurity related issues,” he says.

The InnovationThe core difference between Mi-croWorld and other companies in thesegment is the innovation it brings within its approach at securing the network.MicroWorld Winsock Layer (MWL)Technology developed by MicroWorld isan innovative technology which canwork between the Winsock Layer andapplication layer. MWL allows Mi-croWorld products to stop unsafe contentat the transport layer itself, before it en-ters the application layer, and thus pro-tects Information Systems effectively.MicroWorld is the sole company to have

While most large enterprises have

embraced IT security asa part of the corporateculture, most SMEs havebeen as unguarded assmall-town residentswho keep their doorsand windows unlocked.


The author is CEO, Silvan Innovations Lab

TECHNOLOGY By M.Girikrishna

roadmap for ip Based surveillance systems in india

The terrorist attacks of26/11 and beyond haveheightened the securityconcerns of the countryand also highlighted the

limitations of analog CCTV basedsurveillance systems which are veryprevalent in India. The surveillancesystems deployed currently are not yetcapable of autonomous analysis ofcomplex events. Today, the videofeeds from millions of surveillancecameras are just recorded to facilitatepost-event forensic analysis. Such apassive system cannot help with crimeor terror prevention, accident and mit-igation which require real-time eventrecognition.

Following all this, an urgent need

has been felt to move away from tra-ditional systems and towards digitalIP based surveillance systems as theyare expected to provide the ability torespond to events as they occur andalso enable remote monitoring even asthe affected areas remain inaccessible. Typically, CCTV systems are de-ployed over a number of remote loca-tions and are monitored by securitypersonnel at a central location. In suchsystems images from multiple cam-eras are streamed to a video monitorthat can be viewed by a security per-son. As the number of cameras in-crease, the potential for the securitypersonnel to miss a significant eventincreases. In IP based surveillance systems, the

effectiveness of such a system is de-termined by the availability of the net-work as well as the bandwidthavailable with the network. The factthat the video is streamed over thenetwork can result in delayed re-sponse times to events that require im-mediate action. The number of failurepoints in such a system can also leadto an ineffective surveillance systemin conditions where bandwidth is lim-ited and power availability is an issue.There is a possibility that criticalvideo information is lost and impor-tant events are missed whenever thereis network or power failure, in a cen-tralized surveillance system.

The key problems in deploying aneffective IP based Video Surveillance

system in a developing market likeIndia is the availability of 24/7 poweras well as network bandwidth and theneed of highly technically skilled sup-port staff.

It would be desirable to provide adistributed video surveillance systemthat has cameras with the ability to ad-dress situations involving lack ofpower and limited or no network. Inparticular in the case of power failure,cameras need to have a local inde-pendent power source that will ensurethat the camera continues to function.In the case of network failure, thecamera should have the ability to storethe video images locally and the videocontent can be synchronized with thecentral location on resumption of nor-mal services. In the case of networkbandwidth being a limitation, thecamera should have the ability to de-cide the resolutions and the frame ratefor streaming the video over the net-work. To improve response time tospecific triggers or events, the camerashould have the ability to analyse thevideo, detect specific events and trig-ger alarms. This system ensures thatthe camera is the only point of failureand the other cameras in the systemcan takeover if one camera fails. As aresult such a surveillance system be-comes highly available and reliable.

Cameras will need to have bothbattery backup as well as local storageto provide for an eventuality where ei-ther power and/or network are un-available or limited. To support theeffective utilization of the batterybackup and local storage, algorithmswill need to be implemented to sup-port multiple situations. While pro-viding battery backup on the camerais an obvious solution for enablingcameras to continue to work in the ab-sence of AC power, power utilizationand optimization will be required toextend the charge on the battery sothat the cameras continue to functioneven if power remains unavailable forextended periods.

Video analytics addresses infrastruc-ture challenges by enabling content-aware storage and routing. Thesoftware is the equivalent of having atireless, unblinking person watch eachcamera, detect relevant events, andmake decisions on what events to storeand when to stream video. An analyt-ics-enabled Video Management Soft-ware (VMS) addresses the three bigscalability challenges of enterprisevideo deployments — human re-sources, storage and bandwidth —more effectively and cost-efficientlythan a system without this capability.In view of its importance, it is an ur-gent necessity to come up with videoanalytics that can autonomously track,monitor, analyse and verify real-lifesituations in order to alert in the eventof any abnormal activity without anydelay. As the importance of au-tonomous large scale surveillance sys-tem continues to rise, especially inhomeland security, video analytics isbound to take a pivotal role. The suc-cess of autonomous surveillance sys-tem solely depends on video analytics,which is the brain behind cameras.Embedded video analytics provides awin-win situation, by enabling secu-rity personnel to prevent crime insteadof investigating it after the incident. Adistributed video surveillance solutiongreatly reduces operational cost whileincreasing the availability, reliability,scalabaility and performance of thesystem while allowing centralized ad-ministration and monitoring. Thistechnology can transform the way en-terprises plan and deploy IP video sur-veillance systems. Systems with thesefeatures can be deployed in publicplaces like Airports, Railway Stationsand Bus Stations as well as large cam-puses including places like IT Parks toprevent as well as limit the impact ofterrorist attacks.

Video surveillance on the digitalIP-based network environment ishighly dependent on availability ofnetwork bandwidth. This constraint

needs to be addressed by relocating theintelligence from the remote analyticscenter to embedded intelligence in thecamera thus providing alerts in realtime with high levels of functionalitywith significantly lower costs andbandwidth requirements. The device atthe edge should have analytics that candetect events in real-time and streamvideo over the network for secondaryprocessing on the server side. Thevideo management software (VMS) inthe system will have the intelligenceto make decisions with respect tousage of storage and generation ofalerts and alarms.

This article clearly demonstratesthat there are specific challenges thatneed to be addressed to enable a seam-less and smooth transition from analogsystems to digital IP based surveil-lance systems in the Indian market.Various reports suggest that the totalIndia surveillance market is around Rs2500 Crores, growing at the rate of 25-30% per year. Of that the IP cameramarket is Rs 300 Crores and theCCTV camera market is Rs 1500Crores. The market share of IP-cam-era market is steadily increasing, andby 2012, IP-camera volume is pro-jected to take over CCTV (analog)camera volume. The Indian market ismostly served by imported cameras.The video analytics has not yet pickedup the demand in commercial surveil-lance market, but there are specificneeds in Defence and Traffic manage-ment. The market is currently cateredby numerous small serviceproviders/dealers who do the systemintegration and installations of mostlyimported cameras. Recent security is-sues, government regulations, andstarting of ‘surveillance as service’business by few service providers willcreate a bigger discontinuity in themarket. Clearly an opportunity existsto create products for the Indian mar-ket that meets this need but also togrow the market at a rate that is muchfaster than projected.

Most of us who watchaction movies wherea skilled hackerholds an organiza-tion or even a coun-

try to ransom will dismiss it as fiction.However, the case of Stuxnet – thefirst computer worm to affect real-world infrastructure, easily reads likethe latest blockbuster. This is the firstpublicly widespread threat that hasshown a possibility of gaining controlof industrial systems used in criticalinfrastructure and placing it in thewrong hands.

Stuxnet confirms that cybercrimi-nals are targeting four key areas ofweakness which puts enterprise envi-ronments at risk: poorly enforced ITpolicies, poorly protected information,poorly managed systems and poorlyprotected infrastructure. It also signalsa shift in the cyber security landscape– attackers who were earlier motivatedby fame or financial gain, are todayaiming to sabotage real-world sys-tems.

At the same time, Indian enter-prises also need to secure themselvesagainst the growing insider threat todata. While malicious insider databreaches by disgruntled employees areincreasing, the well-meaning insiderthreat to data has also grown. Syman-tec’s State of Enterprise Security Sur-vey 2010 revealed that 54 percent ofIndian enterprises feel external attacksare growing, 42 percent feel internal

malicious attacks are growing and 52percent feel internal unintentional in-stances of data loss are rising. The sur-vey also revealed that 23 percent ofIndian enterprises experienced databreaches due to malicious insiders and31 percent experienced data breachesto insider negligence. Data loss bywell-meaning insiders occurs due toemployees accidentally disclosingconfidential data, causing internal dataspills, trying to undermine security,falling victim to social engineeringtactics, or bypassing key companyprocesses.

All these security risks are aggra-vated by the explosion of mobile de-vices in the enterprise. According toindustry reports over 80 percent ofFortune 100 companies are using ortesting a tablet, an increase from 65

percent three months ago. Symantec’sEnterprise Security Survey 2010 alsorevealed that 73 percent of Indian en-terprises are witnessing a growth insmartphones connecting to the net-work.

The increasing mobility of theworkforce and the resulting hetero-geneity of enterprise environmentsmean information today is more dis-persed, and much more difficult tomanage and secure. This is aggravatedby the fact that the volume of digitalinformation that is being generated isalso exploding. Information explosionin enterprises today is particularly inthe form of unstructured data – for ex-ample, spreadsheets, documents andemails – that does not reside in tradi-tional databases. IDC predicts thegrowth of unstructured data to con-


tinue at over 60 percent per year, andin many organizations it accounts formore than 80 percent of all data. Thisdeluge of unstructured data is muchmore difficult to manage and secure.An organization’s most valuable in-formation – its intellectual property –is often buried within a growing vol-ume of unstructured documents, manyof which are not sensitive. Unstruc-tured data stores are also typically lesssecure than other data repositories,making them more vulnerable to dataloss from both internal and externalthreats.

Compounded by trends such ascloud computing and virtualization,enterprises today are struggling tomanage the mounting volumes of in-formation stored and accessed acrossmultiple devices and locations and fac-ing attack from outside and within.

In fact, today the infrastructure isbecoming almost irrelevant – it is peo-ple and information that are drivingtechnology. From intellectual propertyto customer records, data has becomecritical to the bottom-line. Addition-ally, as users access confidential datastored on the cloud through a varietyof devices, it is becoming more im-portant for enterprises to trust that theapplications, users and devices con-necting to the network are authentic.Organizations are struggling with mul-tiple point solutions to manage and se-cure their data and need technology towork together to solve problems.

Apart from the pressing need to se-cure information, enterprises are alsofacing regulatory pressures. Whilecompliance, certification and adher-ence to laws, standards and businesspractices were earlier a requirementonly for a few Indian enterprises thathad global operations, the scenario ischanging. Security and compliance isstarting to be seen as a business in-vestment as regulations are being pro-posed for Indian enterprises acrossvarious sectors. From new regulationsby the RBI governing the way tech-

nology is used in the financial sector,to directives for telcos from the Intel-ligence Bureau, global Indian enter-prises today need to comply with amix of local and international regula-tions. A recent Symantec survey foundthat Indian enterprises are, on an aver-age, exploring 19 standards and frame-works, eight of which they currentlycomply with.

In such a scenario, businesses needto manage risk proactively, protectingnot just the infrastructure that data re-sides in, but also the information itself.The dynamic nature of threats from amultitude of sources now means or-ganizations have to effectively reducerisk and ensure data is protected at alltimes, no matter where it is used orstored. Moving forward, enterprisesrequire a security strategy that is risk-based and policy-driven, information-centric and operationalized across awell-managed infrastructure.

This means that enterprises need to:�� Develop and enforce IT policies

and automate complianceprocesses.

�� Protect information proactivelyby taking an information-centricapproach. Taking a content-aware

approach to protecting informa-tion is key in knowing who ownsthe information, where sensitiveinformation resides, who has ac-cess, and how to protect it as it iscoming in or leaving your organi-zation. Utilize encryption to se-cure sensitive information andprohibit access by unauthorizedindividuals.

�� Authenticate identities by lever-aging solutions that allow busi-nesses to ensure only authorizedpersonnel have access to systems.Authentication also enables or-ganizations to protect public fac-ing assets by ensuring the trueidentity of a device, system, or ap-plication is authentic. This pre-vents individuals fromaccidentally disclosing credentialsto an attack site and from attach-ing unauthorized devices to the in-frastructure.

�� Manage systems by implement-ing secure operating environ-ments, distributing and enforcingpatch levels, automating processesto streamline efficiency, and mon-itoring and reporting on systemstatus.

�� Protect the infrastructure by se-curing endpoints, messaging andWeb environments. Organizationsalso need the visibility and secu-rity intelligence to respond tothreats rapidly.

�� Ensure 24x7 availability. Organ-izations should implement testingmethods that are non-disruptiveand they can reduce complexityby automating failover.

�� Develop an information man-agement strategy that includes aninformation retention plan andpolicies. Organizations need tostop using backup for archivingand legal holds, implement dedu-plication everywhere to free re-sources, use a full-featuredarchive system and deploy dataloss prevention technologies.

overcome New security Challengeswith an information-Centric approach

The author is Vice President, India Product Operations, Symantec

TECHNOLOGY By Shantanu Ghosh

The increasing mobility of theworkforce and theresulting heterogeneity ofenterprise environments meaninformation today ismore dispersed, andmuch more difficultto manage and secure


say hello to the new‘Consumerized iT’

workplace

The author is Director Sales, McAfee India

TECHNOLOGY By Ambarish Deshpande

The rapid proliferation ofsmart devices such as smartphones, PDAs and laptopsis more than just a market-ing and technological suc-

cess story. These compactmulti-functional devices have been re-sponsible for changing the economicand social fabric globally by being an in-tegral part of our daily environment. Atthe core of this phenomenon is the factthat these powerful devices can serve asa single point gateway to accessing in-formation, making transactions, seekingproducts, downloading entertainment –anywhere and anytime.

However the ubiquity of smart de-vices is also posing as a major challengeconfronting organisations today. Havinggrown up in the age of iphones andiPads, today’s ‘Generation Y’ compris-ing of technologically savvy, mobile, jobhopping professionals is increasingly in-sisting on using their own devices attheir workplaces to ensure uninterruptedaccess to company information and

faster turnaround and productivity tomeet the imperatives of today’s compet-itive workplaces.

But imagine a scenario when an em-ployee uses three to four smart devicesto juggle between various applicationssuch as social networking sites, con-sumer applications for banking or trav-elling and business applications such asCRM, databases etc; using all these de-vices interchangeably for business andpersonal activities. This certainly im-plies opening a Pandora’s box of issuesassociated with unauthorised access andsubsequent data thefts!

This phenomenon that is redefiningthe functioning of workplaces is referredas ‘Consumerization of IT’ and istouted to be one of the most radical andirreversible transformations in Enter-prise IT.

Consumerization: To adopt or not toadopt According to a McAfee survey con-ducted in 2010 with global IT decision-

makers, administrators, consultants, andsecurity analysts, the key drivers of Con-sumerization of IT are increased em-ployee productivity (58 percent) andgreater flexibility and turnaround time (52percent). However the security risks per-taining to this trend have made many or-ganizations firmly oppose it by restrictingthe introduction of personal devices intothe workplace and attempting to lockdown data. This however could bedeemed as an escapist approach. Very fewcompanies realise that productivity bene-fits aside, the willingness to embrace‘Consumerization of IT’ presents an op-portunity for companies to save their cap-ital expenses by leveraging theiremployees’ pre-existing investments insuch powerful devices. The way to makethis trend work in your favour is by un-derstanding the needs of an organisationand building a suitable strategy that in-corporates this new future of work.

So how can organisations leverage theproductivity and cost benefits of this trendwithout being affected by its securitychallenges? McAfee recommends the fol-lowing strategies for organisations to lifttheir veil of uncertainty around this trendand leverage it as a productivity catalyst:� Deploy host and network anti-mal-

ware to reduce infections and protectcompany systems. Use a firewall andnetwork intrusion prevention system

(IPS) to control traffic to and fromkey assets.

� Ensure VPNs for secure connec-tions to corporate networks.

� Enforce remote encryption andwiping of information and applica-tions for company owned smartphones and other mobile devices toprotect data in case the device is lostor stolen. It is however important tonote that this approach is difficult touse with users’ personal mobilephones and computers. Organisa-tions need to use network accesscontrol (NAC) to ensure that em-ployee-owned devices have in-stalled proper security tools and arecompliant with IT standards prior toaccessing the network. NAC cancontrol guest devices and other un-managed endpoints and ensure ac-cess to resources or infect yournetwork.

� By deploying virtual desktops, em-ployees can access company appli-

cations and data on personal de-vices, but the application infra-structure and data remain oncorporate servers behind the fire-wall.

� Implement encryption for informa-tion at rest and in motion. If a re-mote device falls into the wronghands or a transmission is inter-cepted, encrypted information isunusable. Keep in mind that whilethis strategy is practical for com-pany-owned laptops and employee-owned smart phones, it’s difficult toenforce data encryption on em-ployee-owned PCs and Macs.

� Consider a relatively new develop-ment called “PC on a stick,” inwhich thumb drives (USB drives)or memory cards store a cus-tomized interface or launch pad,user-selected applications, and data.Users can carry this computer-on-a-stick to any public or shared ma-chine, plug it in, and begin working

with familiar tools and personalizedsettings. When the drive or card isremoved, there is no trace of theuser’s work left on the PC.

� Deploy integrated endpoint securitywith a centralized managementconsole to ease the effort requiredby security administrators and en-able them to easily manage all end-points in the system.

� An integrated, centralized strategyis always more efficient and effec-tive from a cost and performancestandpoint than deploying a seriesof point solutions.

Like most technologies, Consumeriza-tion of IT is a mixed blessing with someincredible advantages bundled with un-foreseen risks. But with InformationTechnology having undergone a para-digm shift in the last decade, CIOs willneed to objectively consider such path-breaking approaches to technologies totrigger greater productivity and inno-vation in organisations.

SecurityConferencesiliconindia

Cybercrime. Malware incidents. Data breaches. Compliance legislation. Today’s changing security landscape means you can’t leave anything to chance.. And new threats have kept you on your toes. What are some more of the unsettling things that need to be addressed? And how do you survive and advance in your career?Siliconindia's Security Conference 2011 will address the challenges and issues at the forefront of enterprise security. You'll get the answers to these and many more questions:

· What must I know about the evolving technologies of information security and related disciplines?· How do I become a more e!ective security professional?· How do I technically secure applications, or handle security for my industry speci"c requirements?· What is my career path within or outside my current company/agency?· How can I communicate my value to the business more e!ectively?

The conference brings together practitioners, professionals, and others interested in the latest advances in the security of computer systems and networks. Security Conference 2011 provides an excellent opportunity to meet and network with delegates in a professional learning environment whilst demonstrating your commitment to commu-nity and the industry. “

April 9, 2011Mumbai

SpeakersAbhilash SonwaneSr. Vice President, Cyberoam

K. K. MookheyPrincipal Consultant, Network Intelligence

Jaimon JoseDistinguished Engineer, Novell

Parag DeshpandePrincipal eGRC Consultant, RSA

Vijay MahajaniSr. Manager, Wipro Consulting Services

Vaidyanathan IyerSales Leader, IBM Security Solutions

Tejas LagadDirector of Product ManagementNexus Technology

Shreeraj ShahDirector, Blueinfy

Kartik ShindeSenior Manager - Advisory ServicesErnst & Young

Kamal SharmaTechnical Sales Consultant - India & SAARC, Trend Micro India

Cloud Security Partner Internet Security Partner

Register now at http://www.siliconindia.com/eventsFor speaking and sponsorship opportunities write to [email protected] or call 080-43112195


only used for games and videos, buttoday business applications and compli-cated business logic is also delivered viaflash for web applications to provide asuperior user experience.

Web 2.0 Attack SurfaceTypically most of the attacks that affecttraditional websites and web applica-tions still apply to Web 2.0 applicationsas well. Attackers can inject maliciousJavaScript into the application’s inputand attack other users of the applicationor even cause a Denial-of-Service of theapplication. Other injection based at-tacks like SQL Injection can also be per-petrated, where an attacker canpotentially get access to the databaseusing crafted SQL queries in the appli-cation input. However, the attack surface is greatlyincreased in Web 2.0 applications formany reasons. A few of them are:

Client Side Business Logic – One ofthe key elements of several Web 2.0 ap-plications is that there is a great deal ofapplication business logic present at theclient side as opposed to the server side.This is so, because Web 2.0 applicationsare supposed to provide quicker resultsand a higher level of interaction with theuser, without having the refresh/load theweb page again. However, in Web 2.0,the client (browser) receives a great dealof business logic. Developers oftencommit the error of sending more datato the client than necessary. For in-stance, an AJAX application uses theJSON to hold the data in a request andresponse. The data is present in theJSON request or response in an arrayformat. The client receives the data inJSON format in a response and parsesit to be displayed to a user. Several de-velopers do not validate the input sentto the server or validate the responsesent by the server to the client, as a re-sult of which an attacker can potentialsend malicious SQL queries in theJSON request and gain access to sensi-tive information in the database and per-

petrate an attack against the database.The attacker can also send maliciousscripts in the request over JSON andperpetrate Cross Site Scripting attacks(XSS), which may affect the other usersof the application.

Flash applications contain a greatdeal of business logic implementationin modern web 2.0 applications. The at-tacker can identify the requests made bythe flash object in the web application.The attacker can send crafted web re-quests through the flash objects and ifthe application does not validate or fil-ter input, can result in XSS and other in-jection attacks.

HTML5 Insecurity – The HTML5provides a great deal of features forRich Internet applications. The new fea-tures of the HTML5 can also be used bythe attacker to perpetrate Cross SiteScripting attacks (XSS). The new tagsintroduced by the HTML5 like <can-vas> or <video> can be used by the at-tacker to inject JavaScript code andperpetrate XSS attacks, where anythingfrom hijacking a user’s session to. Forinstance an attacker may inject: <videoposter= javascript: document. cookie//This attack may result in the user’s cur-rent session id to be hijacked by the at-tacker.

Evil API based Attacks – Many Web2.0 apps work based on the API model.This is especially popular with socialnetworks and is gaining a great deal oftraction with Business Applications aswell. The organization decides to pro-vide its API to external developers tocreate mashups or promote develop-ment of value-added applications thatrun on top of the organization’s applica-tion. For instance, Facebook apps areexamples of API based applications,provided by Facebook’s API. It is usually seen that the API is seldomvalidated for coding practices. A mali-cious developer may write an applica-tion that uses the API of the host webapplication to perpetrate attacks against

the users of the application. This hasbeen seen extensively in attacks perpe-trated by third party applications againstthe users of social networks like face-book and twitter. In many cases standard JavaScript APIfiles used by the application can becalled without authentication to provideaccess to privileged functions in the ap-plication. These API files are usuallydiscovered by attackers through a sim-ple process of crawling the target webapplication.

The Solution – Web 2.0 and CloudAppsThe best solution to protect critical En-terprise Web 2.0 and Cloud Applica-tions is to build security into theSDLC and ensure that security is ahigh priority throughout the develop-ment and deployment lifecycle of theapplication. These applications arebuilt for high interconnectivity, inter-action and interoperability with usersand other applications; therefore se-curity is a critical priority. The organ-ization must develop a strong practiceof incorporating security into the life-cycle for security issues to be nippedat the bud. Organizations must also test theseweb applications early and often. Avariety of tests should be conductedfor these applications before they aredeployed in the environment. Appli-cations should be subject to white-boxtesting techniques like code reviewand analysis at regular stages of de-velopment. Furthermore, applicationsshould also be subjected to Vulnera-bility Assessments and PenetrationTesting (where they are attacked froman attacker’s perspective) where cod-ing flaws and configuration vulnera-bilities are identified.

Web 2.0 and the Cloud haveopened up new avenues for enter-prises experience the full power of theweb. However, treading carefully withsecurity as a key priority is my adviseto enterprises.

Cloud SecurityChallenges in Securing EnterpriseWeb 2.0 Applications

Web 2.0 is every-where. Every or-ganization thatwants a web pres-ence today wants a

Web 2.0 application and would like toexploit the power of the Cloud. How-ever, the Web 2.0 phenomenon has a se-rious security flipside. There are myriadways in which an attacker can compro-mise Web 2.0 applications, and this hasbeen a marked increase from the tradi-tional websites and web applicationfrom the Web 1.0 era. This article fo-cuses on some of the attacks againstWeb 2.0 and Cloud applications andhow organizations have to consider se-curity seriously before they develop/de-ploy these applications for their criticalbusiness requirements.

Web 2.0 Apps – A Brief IntroductionWeb 2.0 has become a phenomenonever since it was coined in the year1999. Over time, we have seen web ap-plications being highly interactive andinteroperable. Social Networking Sites,Video Sharing Sites, Blogs, Wikis,Hosted Services, Software-as-a-Service (SaaS), Mashups and so on aresome examples of Web 2.0 applications.

Web 2.0 applications usually consistof the following technologies

HTML5 – HTML5 is a revision to theexisting HTML 4.01 language, whichprovides improvements to the languageas well as a great deal of features withrespect to multimedia and rich content.There are new tags like <video> and<audio> for multimedia content

Web Services – Web Service is a soft-ware component that is made availableover a network. Web services allow ap-plication developers to utilize servicesprovided by different service providersin order to create integrated web appli-cations or mashup applications, provid-ing high level of interoperability and agreater set of features for their users.

Web services can be located withthe UDDI (Universal Description, Dis-covery and Integration), which is like adirectory service for web services. Theservices are located and described usingthe WSDL (Web Services DescriptionLanguage), which is XML based. Webservices are traditionally accessed usingthe SOAP protocol. However, in recenttimes the move is towards an API modelusing the REST (Representational State

Transfer) accessed using HTTP Requestand response messages with the XML-HTTP-Request with JSON (JavaScriptObject Notation).

AJAX, Flash and RIA – Web Applica-tions today are expected to provide agreater user experience than ever be-fore. This is made possible by Rich In-ternet Application technologies likeAJAX and Flash. AJAX is ‘Asynchro-nous JavaScript and XML’, which en-ables asynchronous communicationsbetween the user’s browser and the webserver using the XML-HTTP-Request.AJAX is also used to create mashups ofapplications where the web applicationcan access different external web serv-ices and provide the user with the pres-entation and content using content fromdifferent web services. For instance, areal estate website can use a mashupcontaining content from Google Mapsand its own real estate listing content todraw a map of different properties thatare on sale for greater user interactionand flexibility. Flash is another popular Client-SideTechnology, which uses Adobe Flashobjects to display and interact with theuser based on content. Earlier flash was

The author is CTO, we45 Solutions India

TECHNOLOGY By Abhay Bhargav

OF

IN

DIA

TOP

B Schools

OF INDIA

100Schools

Welcome to the second edition of SiliconIndia’s comprehensive salary and career growth survey ofmanagement graduates from TOP 200 B-Schools ofIndia.“For the first time in India, SiliconIndia has donea survey to highlight the most important element of

management education and i.e. perceived value of B-Schoolsgraduates in the job market post 5 years of theirMBA”

Before you let this thought precipitate that this is yet another B-School Survey and it will probably deepen your dilemma in short-listing the B-Schools, we would quickly like to tell you why thissurvey is different and why it make enormous sense going through acomplete report. For the first time in India, SiliconIndia has done asurvey to high light The most important element of management education i.e. perceived value of B Schools Graduates’ in the jobmarket post 5 years of their MBA. To be precise, this Report will helpMBA aspirants in mapping the colleges based on the salary & careerGrowth. The report also includes couple of other exciting rankingslike Top New Generation B-Schools and zonal rankings of B-Schoolswith best earning potential Apart from IIMs The survey has beenconducted by SiliconIndia independently without any direct inputsfrom the colleges that have helped in giving unbiased stats. The average salary data have been collated by SiliconIndia by sampling20,610 management graduates of 2006 batch across India, who participated in the online polling conducted on SiliconIndia from 1stFebruary May, 2011 to 15th March, 2011. We assure you that thesalary figures and other stats represented in the report are very closeto the reality.

No College Name Location Avg Salary

1 IIM Bangalore Bangalore 18.51

2 XLRI Jamshedpur 17.68

3 IIM Ahemdabad Ahemdabad 16.39

4 JBIMS Mumbai 15.928

5 IIM Kolkata Kolkata 15.584

6 S.P.Jain Inst. Of Mgmt Mumbai 14.98

7 FMS Delhi Delhi 14.74

8 IIM Lucknow Lucknow 14.5375

9 MDI Gurgaon Delhi 14.67

10 IIM Indore Indore 14.27

11 IIM Kozhikode Kozhikode 12.171

12 IIFT Delhi 12.042

13 National Inst. Of Industrial Eng. Mumbai 11.96

14 NIRMA Ahmedabad 11.865

15 MICA Ahmedabad 11.7

16 Goa Institute of Mgmt Goa 11.4

17 XIMB Bhubaneswar 11.29

18 IRMA Anand 11.178

19 IMI Delhi 10.64

20 NMIMS Mumbai 10.12

21 TAPMI Manipal 10.025

22 K J Somaiya Mumbai 9.95

23 IIT Rorkee Rorkee 9.88

24 ITS Mohan Nagar Ghaziabad 9.46

25 Great Lakes Inst Of Mgmt Chennai 9.453

26 IIT Chennai Chennai 9.0625

27 BIMM Pune 8.982

28 Welingkar Mumbai 8.81

29 Fore School Of Mgmt Delhi 8.63

30 ITS Noida Noida 8.409

31 Lal Bahadur Shastri Inst. Of Mgmt. Delhi 8.33

32 LIBA Chennai 8.283

33 IBA Bangalore 8.125

34 Aicar Business School Mumbai 8.075

35 Alliance Business School Bangalore 8.03

36 Poona School Of Business Pune 7.93

37 Infinity Business School Gurgaon 7.673

38 IMDR Pune 7.64

39 SCMHRD Pune 7.32

40 IBS Hyderabad 7.291

41 Fortune Inst of International Business Delhi 7.08

42 ITM Mumbai 7.06

43 Loyola College Chennai 6.95

44 Amity Business School Noida 6.87

45 XIME Bangalore 6.6

46 Manipal Inst of Mgmt Manipal 6.55

47 National Inst. Of Magmt. Bangalore 6.53

48 SIBM Pune Pune 6.407

49 IMT Ghaziabad Ghaziabad 6.21

50 IIPM Delhi 6.18


No College Name Loca�on AvgSalary

51 IFMR Chennai 6.12

52 Amrita Business School Amritapuri 6.075

53 Kirloskar Inst of Mgmt Harihar 6.065

54 GITAM Visakhapatnam 6.004

55 Globsyn Business School Kolkata 5.94

56 IPE Hyderabad 5.8925

57 Symbiosis Inst Mgmt Studies Pune 5.86

58 K.C.College of Management Studies Mumbai 5.81

59 Banaras Hindu University Varanasi 5.71

60 ISB&M Pune 5.68

61 Christ Institute of Mgmt. Bangalore 5.512

62 PSG Coimbatore 5.44

63 MET Institute of Management Mumbai 5.4

64 IMS Ghaziabad Ghaziabad 5.36

65 BIM Tirchy Tirchy 5.205

66 New Delhi Inst. Of Mgmt. Delhi 5.2

67 Asia Pacific Inst. Of Mgmt Delhi 5.163

68 IILM Gurgaon 5.158

69 IME Mumbai 5.147

70 EMPI Delhi 5.1

71 Rai Business School Delhi 5.09

72 Dr. D.Y. Patil Institute of Management & Research Mumbai 5.07

73 Indira Institute of Management Pune Pune 5.05

74 XISS Ranchi 5

75 TISS Mumbai 5

76 IFIM Bangalore 4.93

77 BIMT Gurgaon 4.905

78 IISWBM Kolkata 4.711

79 Apeejay School of Marketing Delhi 4.425

80 TASMAC Pune 4.42

81 Vellore Inst. Of Technology Vellore 4.4

82 NIILM Delhi 4.25

83 SRM School of Management Chennai 4.23

84 IPEM Ghaziabad 4.216

85 Jaipuria Institute of Management Lucknow 4.11

86 IFTM Moradabaad 4

87 BIT Ranchi Ranchi 3.959

88 Jagan Inst. Of Mgmt. Sc. Jaipur 3.925

89 Integral Institute Of Advanced Management Visakhapatnam 3.91

90 Bangalore Management Academy Bangalore 3.905

91 Asan Memorial Inst. Of Mgmt Chennai 3.9

92 Acharya Inst. Mgmt. Sc. Bangalore 3.775

93 EIILM Kolkata 3.725

94 IBMT Bangalore 3.73

95 RCM, Bhubaneswar Bhubaneswar 3.7

96 Skyline Business School Delhi 3.65

97 IBMR Bangalore 3.458

98 KIIT SOM Bhubaneswar 3.443

99 Taxila Business School Jaipur 3.2

100 Acharya Inst. Of Technology Bangalore 2.83333

TOP 100 B-SCHOOLS OF INDIA


Alook at the placements of2010, however, showssome signs of recovery.Spearheading this recov-ery, is an average 25 per

cent upsurge in average domesticsalaries across top rung B schools.

For almost all B-schools, 2009 hadbeen a nightmare with gloomy place-ment scenario. Courtesy, the dippingglobal economic health, infested by thevirus named “recession”.

This year’s placements are markedby a major shuffle in the sector wisepreferences. In a major shift of trends,PSUs which last year saw lion’s shareof graduates opting for it, took a dip thisyear. 2010 saw the return of Bankingand Finance as the major recruiters al-though the numbers did not match tolast year’s statistics but still they con-tinued to be the ones to catch hold ofmajority of MBA graduates. Simultane-ously, this year saw consulting firmshiring on an increased rate as comparedto that of last year. We at siliconin-dia.com have carefully consolidated thecrucial facts and figures from the place-ment press releases as issued by the topB-schools, and drawn out followingmajor trends this year:

A crystal clear upturn in average do-mestic salary: 2010 comes as a whiffof fresh air to all those concerned aboutthe credit crunch in the Indian marketlast year. This year’s placements have

witnessed a significant rise (20 per centapprox.) in the salary offered. The aver-age salary figures, which, although donot compare to the 2008 standard, aresignificantly higher than true figures of2009.

Finance and Banking bounce back asthe major recruiters: Finance andbanking sector is in vogue again. Inspite of this year’s lower statistics hint-ing at a slower revival rate, this sectorcontinues to rule by absorbing the ma-jority across the top B schools.

Global blue chip firms pitch in pro-fusely: With the resurgence of globaleconomy, came innumerable offersfrom international companies like Mck-insey & Co The Boston ConsultingGroup, Monitor Group, Bain and Com-pany, Booz and Company, AT Kearneyand Oliver Wyman, and many moreglobal firms showed faith in Indianbrains and flooded them with interna-tional stints. This further strengthenedthe emerging perception of a fast pacedeconomic recovery.

PSUs preferences take a nose-dive,Consulting firms surface up: PSUshad witnessed a robust crowd of stu-dents at its doorsteps last year but thisyear the interest in this sector seems tohave taken a plunge whereas consultingfirms were back with a vengeance thisseason. Firms like Mckinsey & Co., Ac-

centure Business Consulting, KPMG,Deloitte, PricewaterhouseCoopers,Bristlecone, Hewitt, Cognizant Busi-ness Consulting, Droege, Gallup Con-sulting, etc. picking up a sizeable chunk.

Job profiles given more priority overperks: A very interesting trend thatseems to be emerging is that of givingmore preference to better and befittingprofiles. “Profiles offered clearly tookprecedence over salaries and incen-tives,”

More Pre Placement offers and Lat-eral Placement offers this time: Inwhat came to be deemed as an impres-sive prelude to this year’s final fulfill-ing placements, students were offeredincreased offers of pre placement offersand lateral placement offers.

Overall, the placements 2010 comeas a breather for all that suffocation thathad settled in last year, still the signs areyet not as good as 2008. This year, withthe industry bouncing back, students ofbusiness schools have fresh smiles ontheir faces…placements are comingback to life.

placements 2010 see 20 percent hike in salary

Rank College Name Location

1 XLRI Jamshedpur

2 IIM Kolkata Kolkata

3 XIMB Bhubaneswar

4 Globsyn BusinessSchool Kolkata

5 XISS Ranchi

6 IISWBM Kolkata

7 BIT Ranchi Ranchi

8 EIILM Kolkata

9 RCM, Bhubaneswar Bhubaneswar


1 IIM B Bangalore

2 IIM Kozhikode Kozhikode

3 TAPMI Manipal

4 Great Lakes Inst Of Mgmt Chennai

5 IIT Chennai Chennai

6 LIBA Chennai

7 IBA Bangalore

8 Alliance Business School Bangalore

9 IBS Hyderabad

10 Loyola College Bangalore


1 FMS Delhi Delhi

2 IIM Lucknow Lucknow

3 MDI Gurgaon Delhi

4 IIFT Delhi

5 IMI Delhi

6 ITS Mohan Nagar Ghaziabad

7 Fore School Of Mgmt Delhi

8 ITS Noida Noida

9 LBSIM Delhi

10 FIIB Delhi


1 IIM Ahemdabad Ahemdabad

2 JBIMS Mumbai

3 S.P.Jain Inst. Of Mgmt Mumbai

4 IIM Indore Indore

5 National Inst. Of Industrial Eng. Mumbai

6 Nirma Ahemdabad

7 MICA Ahmedabad

8 Goa Institute of Mgmt Goa

9 IRMA Anand

10 NMIMS Mumbai

TOP B-Schools in East IndiaTOP B-Schools in West India

TOP B-Schools in North India

TOP B-Schools in South India

TOP 100 B-SCHOOLS OF INDIATOP 100 B-SCHOOLS OF INDIA


Siliconindia in keeping withthe tradition and core phi-losophy of creating a plat-form for experts in theindustry to share their

learning with other stakeholders, or-ganized the Mobile Application Con-ference in Mumbai on February 19th.After the phenomenal success of the‘Mobile Applications Conference’ inDelhi and Bangalore, this edition ofthe conference explored the new op-portunities that are emerging in themobile market in 2011 and shed somelight on where the industry is headedand how entrepreneurs and developerscan take advantage.

The event started with a keynoteaddress on ‘Enterprise Mobile Appli-cations’ by Vinod Gadiyaram, Re-gional Voice Head, Bharti Airtelfollowed by a session on ‘Mobile WebDevelopment’ which was addressedby Mohit Saxena Founder & VicePresident, Technology, InMobi.

Major shifts are changing the gameincluding open platforms and new en-trants. What’s different, what haschanged? Is the app craze a fad or willit continue? The panel on ‘Mobile ap-plications explode. Who wins and wholoses?’ discussed about "the ecosystembattle for developers and their con-sumers" and how it affects everyplayer in the mobile ecosystem —from carriers and handset makers tothe application developers, them-selves. The panelists were AlapGhosh Head of Sales, Mobango andHara Prasanna Kar Director Business

Development , CanvasM.Speaking on challenges of Mobile

Content discovery, Ponnapa PG CEO-Emerging Markets, mPortal said,“India remains a large non-smartphone market and will remain so forthe foreseeable future. A sizeable cus-tomer base is ready to consume a VAS/ App but is very tentative in navigat-ing the maze on their phone. Hence‘Home screen widgets’ will play a crit-ical role in the future of content dis-covery for this large segment”.

The Opportunity:It used to be ringtones —now what?

This was the topic of a panelpresided by Vijayakumar Radhakrish-nan Chief Technology Officer, DotCom Infoway, Sam Gulve ManagingDirector , Spice Mobility and ProbirRoy Co-Founder, Paymate.

The discussion explored the poten-tial of mobile applications, the bene-fits to consumer and enterprise users,and what it will take to transform agreat application into a real company.Sam Gulve started by saying that mo-bile technology has got most inte-grated into our lives and has becomethe Sixth Sensory Organ for the humanrace. God gave us five sensory organs,and then we gave this additional organto ourselves. It’s almost like a neweye, a new ear, a new tongue that wehave got. And when one thinks aboutan application for this new organ, weshould really think about how we canmake life easy, fast and efficient for

the human race. He exhorted the de-velopers to fulfill an existing need byan application rather than creating anapplication and then creating a marketfor it. Probir Roy’s session carried op-portunities in traditional VAS goingforward in a 3 G scenario and also thatthe use of the Mobile for paymentsand financial transactions wrapsaround nicely with its current use forcommunication, information and en-tertainment.

The event then moved on to theVC perspective on opportunities forentrepreneurs in the mobile space. Wehad VCs like Ishan Gupta GeneralManager, One97; Karan Mohla SeniorAssociate, IDG Ventures India;Shailesh Lakhani Vice President, Se-quoia Capital; Manoj Gupta Principal,Nexus Venture Partners and SamirKumar Managing Director, InventusCapital on the panel. Karan MohlaSenior Associate, IDG Ventures Indiasaid, “Having the right team is mostcrucial in any venture. VC’s look pos-itively at backing teams with a com-plementary set of skills, good andupward trending track records, andmost importantly a passion. Clarity ofvision is critical, especially for theCEO when evaluating the strategic op-tions for the company. It is also veryimportant to know what problem youare solving, what solution you are of-fering and who your customer is. VC’slook to invest in companies which aresolving a pain point with a perspectivethat is neither too narrow or too broad.There are a several emerging opportu-

nities within the mobile space espe-cially in the areas of mobile app mar-keting and advertising as the appmarket is proliferating across the car-rier, handset/OEM and off-deck plat-forms.”

At the event, some of the coolestmobile startups showcased the appsthat they built. Some of the presentingcompanies included Ayansys, Black-pepper, Clarice Technologies, DefineLabs, Envision Mobility, Genius Port,Hakuna matata, Money-on-Mobile,Mobuute, Mobiz Infotech, Mo-bile2Win, Omni-Bridge Systems,Spardin, Software workshop, Tech So-lutions, Tritonetech and WeboniseLab. ‘Mobuute Technologies’ walkedaway with the ‘Top Mobile Apps’award.

The other panel discussion at theconference was on ‘Carriers andHandset makers want a piece, too:Where will they go?’ Sunzay Passari,

Executive Vice President - Telecom &VAS, Essar Telecom Group whilespeaking on this said, “When there arefar too many applications very few ofthem reach the audience. The devel-oping companies should keep in mindthis when developing their applica-tions where their chance of success isfar more.” Krishna Durbha Head Cus-tomer Value Management, RelianceCommunications felt that the interest-ing facet of this conference was theopportunity that it gave the develop-ment community to interact intenselywith Venture Capital companies &Operators.

Mobile MarketingOrganizations are no longer merelydipping their toe in the water, themajor brands and advertisers now re-alize that mobile is the next big thing.But how do you execute mobile cam-paigns? Shardul Mohite CEO, We-

bonise Lab; Prasad Ramanathan As-sociate Vice President (Software),Patni Computer Systems andViswanath Ramachandran ChiefTechnology Officer, Webaroo Tech-nology shared their experiences ofhow the big brands have turned mo-bile marketing to their advantage,providing insight to developers andtechnology providers who are lookingto reach the mass market.

Prasad Ramanathan from PatniComputer Systems felt, “Overall theconference was great platform fromthe standpoint of learning about theconsumption patterns of mobile ap-plications within the Indian context.And being able to get the perspectiveof different stakeholders in the mo-bile ecosystem (i.e. application de-velopers, advertisers/ contentaggregators, application distributors,operators, venture capitalists) in oneplace was a great value addition.”

Siliconindia MAC Mumbai divestsan insight into

Indian Mobile Market

EVENT By Akanksha Ravindran


izon Wireless formed a consortiumcalled the “Open Handset Alliance”that encourages open source develop-ment of Android. In this process, un-like Apple’s iOS, which is a closedsystem, source code of the OS is madeavailable to developers to work on andmake interesting applications. Androidbased devices can be customised toyour liking. You can decide the lookand feel of your homepage, your ap-plications; and much more.

More Options in HardwareOne of the prime factors working infavour of Android has been its sheeromnipresence across all kinds of de-vices. While other smartphone leaderslike Apple, Blackberry and Nokiathemselves manage the hardware andsoftwares of their devices which limitsthe number of devices their softwarerun on. Android is open source andhence, the OEM has to concentrate

only on the hardware specs, whileGoogle keeps its focus on develop-ment of the OS. Using this strategy,Android has been gaining marketshare with tremendous speed acrossthe US and Western Europe. A recentIDC report claims that Android is theonly OS, which has registered positivegrowth. This onslaught, in addition tothe OS sporting features, which aren’tpresent in other devices, is also be-cause of the options consumers have.Android devices are available acrossall price categories and in all possibleform factors that gives it an edge overothers.

Features in OSOne of the features that all iPhone orBlackberry users don’t have and An-droid has, is the one that allows usersto issue voice based commands. Sowith an Android you can ‘speak’ yourSMS, Email, Note, Calendar entry and

much else. You can also speak yourstart and end destinations to theGoogle’s voice based navigation sys-tem. The recent Android 2.2 update, ispacked with some innovative featureslike USB tethering. Using this you canuse your phone as a WiFi hotspot.With every passing year, Google hasstrengthened the OS, its app store andits network of developers and the fu-ture looks bright for Android.With the launch of iPad, Apple hascreated a new segment in the industry.Every other manufacturer is readyingup its own version of the tablet beforeit’s too late. Already there are tabletslike the Samsung Galaxy Tab andOlivePad, which support the AndroidOS and are out in the market. In thecoming months, tablets from Dell,Asus, Toshiba etc would be unveiledand Apple’s iOS and Google’s An-droid would fight their wars on newfrontiers.

“Android has hitthe world likea massivetsunami andwith every

passing day its appeal keeps gettingstronger. Nothing, it seems, can comein the way of the gigantic Androidwave. Phone users are certainly notcomplaining, they are busy enjoyingthe ride.”

In the early to mid 2000s, when-ever someone talked of a businessphone, you would inadvertently thinkof a Windows or a Symbian based de-vice, which offered few state-of-the-art features like GPS, touch screen etc.In 2007 Apple unveiled its smart-phone, which ran on Mac OS X cus-tom built for its phone. And a few

years back, Google too announced itsforay into the mobile OS business withthe Android. These two developmentscompletely revolutionized the mobilespace.

The situation has only gottentougher with the consistent process ofsoftware and hardware upgrades bythe brand. However, Google, whichhas always believed in having an openenvironment for software develop-ment, challenged the might of theiPhone and today, Google can easilytake pride in the fact that the AndroidOS is activating close to 200, 000 de-vices everyday!

Android invasionThe first Android OS or the phone wasnowhere in comparison to the look and

feel, interface, ease of use etc of theiPhone or any other hot selling smart-phone. Fast forward to early 2010,when Google unveiled its own smart-phone called the Nexus One, whichturned the tables. This establishedGoogle as a serious player in the mo-bile OS race. Part of the decision tohave its own mobile-OS was the in-creasing trend of accessing Internet ona mobile device and their considerablepresence in web based apps like Maps,Google Voice and more. There are anumber of factors that work in favourof the Android.

Open developmentGoogle, in partnership with hardwaremanufacturers like Motorola, andHTC, and network providers like Ver-

androidThe

Mania

The author is VP, Longcheer India

TECHNOLOGY By Arvind Sharma

Panel Discussions on:The new drivers for Construction marketConstruction Going GreenEmerging Opportunities in Construction IndustryProject �nancingImportance of Design & new building materials

SiliconIndia is organizing the ‘India Infrarealty Leader-ship Summit’ on April 28th in Bangalore. This summit will witness one of the largest convergences of Infrastructure, real estate and construction leaders across the country brainstorm on the burning issues in Bangalore. This mega event will bring together CXO’s from Infrastructure, real estate, construction, urban planners, architects, omestic & foreign investors, hospitality and all concerned with the real estate sector in India.The objective of this summit is to bring all the leaders from top construction and real estate companies on single platform to discuss the latest trends. This is a platformfor evoking thought leadership in a global business environment.The summit is an ideal platform for today's eminent leaders to meet and inspire the leaders of tomorrow.

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Recently I was in a con-versation where some-one seriously suggestedthat Web Application Ac-celeration and WAN Op-

timization should be the job ofdevelopers, since they are in the codeand creating the network traffic. Atfirst I was taken aback by this sugges-

tion. I was a manager of a small teamof developers and admins when WebApplication Firewalls first started tobe bandied about (though I don’t thinkthey had the fancy name then), andwent through this entire discussionthen. Never in my wildest dreams didI think we’d revisit it on the muchgrander scale mentioned. But that does

bring up the question.What is best leftin the hands of app developers andwhat is not?

Not so long ago, a friend of minewho repaired complex systems for aretail chain was laid off and his jobeliminated. Even though he couldprove that he saved the company a lotmoney, it was no longer seen as costeffective to maintain a test bench andthe tools necessary to fix complexcomputer systems. It is just too easy tobuy extended warranty plans or re-place gear before it is worn out to war-rant paying someone to do that jobanymore. That may change again inthe future, but I honestly do not knowmany enterprises that keep bread-board level repair staff around thesedays. Why? Because the specialty ofmaking and repairing breadboards iscentralized in a place where that is allthey do, making it much more cost-ef-fective than every enterprise keepingsomeone on staff for the eventuality ofa breakdown. Even knowing that youwill have unexpected failures, you willhave them whether you have someonehandy to repair them or have to call aservice in to repair them.

There is a similarity here. Thethings that a developer can do well arevast, because we do not really havevertical market developers. Oh thereare a few, and some places want expe-rience in their vertical, but there’s noschooling to be a utility company de-veloper or financial services devel-oper, there’s schooling to writesoftware, and the problem domain youare taught to write it for is “every-thing”. You differentiate based uponlanguages or operating systems in col-lege, but not on vertical market. Andthat is both a plus and a negative.

Developers are not security ex-perts, they are software developmentexperts. They are not Web App Accel-eration experts, nor are the WAN opti-mization experts. They aredevelopment experts who are verygood at turning ideas into applications.

Some are specialized closer to themetal, others are specialized at morebusiness development. Some like myself have done a bit of it all. But onlythose working for companies thatmake WAN Optimization, Web AppAcceleration, or Security solutions arespecialists in their respective areas.There are a few Web App Accelerationdevelopers in the wild, and a few Se-curity developers in the wild, but mosthave gone to the place where they canutilize their specialty full-time; shopsthat make these products.

And that is reason number onewhy it is not something developersshould be doing. At a minimal level,not making fifteen trips across the net-work when two will do it, or checkingfor buffer overflows and SQL inser-tion attacks before deploying code?Certainly but overarching security orWeb App Optimization? No. Theywon’t be as good at is as a dedicatedstaff, and they won’t update it as oftenas a dedicated staff.

The second reason is just asstraight-forward. You do not own thesource to a whole bunch of your ap-plications, so your developers can’t dothese things. Of course you could in-sist that your vendor do in-depthcatch-all security or implement webapp acceleration in their product, oryou could let them develop featuresyour business needs to get the job donewith their software. Of course the lat-ter is a better choice if you have achoice. Chances are you will fallsomewhere on the spectrum closer to“You are not our only customer… No”than to “Oh yes, we have a whole teamwith nothing better to do, we’ll startre-architecting right away.” Again, itis reasonable to expect a certain levelof proficiency be built into your pur-chased apps, but not complete solu-tions for all these issues.

The third reason is a bit more eso-teric. This is not what you hire devel-opers for. It just is not. And it is notwhat your vendors are hiring develop-

ers for. You are hiring them to makeapps the business can use. Is it a wiseuse of someone who is extremely pro-ficient in the tools you use and has de-veloped for your vertical to writenon-business code? Not really.

And fourth? Well fourth is a ques-tion of possibilities. In WAN Opti-mization, some of the solutions areacross applications. Or more to thepoint across streams. Putting that func-tionality somewhere that sees morethan a single application’s streams isnecessary to get the benefits. The sameis true in different ways for Security(SEIM for example) or Web Applica-tion Acceleration (you do not optimize

streaming or logo download per-appunless there is a specific reason to). Sodevelopers really cannot effectivelywrite this stuff into an application. Atleast not and get the benefits offeredby tools readily available today. In allof these cases, they are dealing withdata on the wire also, so unless yourstaff writes network drivers, there aresome optimizations/solutions that justcannot be achieved from within the ap-plication.

Fifth is re-use or the lack thereof.Some code that would suit these needswould be highly reusable. Much of itwould have to be rewritten with eachproduct/platform/OS, simply becausethey are not on the wire detectingthings, they are speaking a develop-ment language, not network protocols.

And finally, a point hinted atabove, what happens when a betterway to do something in one of thesespecialized areas comes along? Do thedevelopers trained in these things dropwhatever they’re doing to respond? Inthe case of security I would say “yes”for the other two, as long as your appsare meeting SLAs or business expec-tations, probably not, even though thenew way of doing things might bringa lot of benefit to the organization.

So do not push things onto devel-opers that they are not in a positionto deliver. Get them training in de-veloping secure software – while youinstall a WAFS and other securitytools. Get them training in networkcommunications protocols – whileinstalling a WAN Optimization solu-tion. And get them training in opti-mizing web development projects –while installing a Web ApplicationAcceleration product. And keep themprimarily focused on building solu-tions that make your business re-sponsive to the market and yourcustomers. Do not force them to rein-vent the wheel, and do not ask themto be a specialist for a short amountof time on a highly complex topic –they get enough of that already.

What Developers ShouldOr Should Not Do

The author is Managing Director, India and SAARC, F5 Networks

TECHNOLOGY By Anil Pochiraju

putting the final touches ona year of worldwide server

market growth, fourth quar-ter 2010 worldwide server

shipments grew 6.5 percentyear on year, while revenue

climbed 16.4 percent, ac-cording to Gartner. From ageographic perspective, allregions, with the exceptionof Japan, grew in revenue

with the three highestgrowth rates shown by

North america (24.5 per-cent), asia/pacific (22.4 per-

cent) and Latin america(12.3 percent).

QuickFacts

Developers are notsecurity experts,they are softwaredevelopment experts


Modern life is becom-ing more and moreinseparable fromcloud computing,the most obvious

example of this being the widespreadacceptance of the social network.Needs have catalyzed growth, and ac-cording to research data from 2010,the Cloud market has already sur-passed $37.8 billion and is continuingto grow towards $121.1 billion inY2015. The continual growth of theCloud market is absolute related to theexplosive development of the “endproducts”, over one billion users havebeen accumulated since the beginningof the Internet’s speedy growth in1999 through 2010. It is expected that

due to universal mobile device usage,the number of total Internet users willincrease to 10 billion in only another10 years, by 2020! With industryneeds and each national government’spromotion, it can be said that CloudComputing has truly entered its stageof growth.

Security is the main driver for goingcloud:IDC’s recent report further reaffirmsthe growth in the virtualization space.As per IDC, with shipments of virtu-

alized servers growing at a compoundannual growth rate (CAGR) of 14 per-cent from 2009 to 2014, it is expectedthat the robust growth in server virtu-alization will continue through 2014as datacenter adoption is increasinglyconsidered mainstream in matureeconomies and as organizations inemerging regions look for datacenterefficiencies. As more enterprises usevirtual servers, they will be searchingfor security solutions that will protectthe server hosting the virtualized envi-ronment; the hypervisor; and shield

the virtual servers from malware andhacker attacks. With data center con-solidation, along with the rise of cloudcomputing, virtualization and VDI,more and more computing power anddata itself are moving into virtualworld. So, data security in this envi-ronment has become more critical.

CXOs are skeptical: The prospects of the Cloud market arelooking promising, attracting invest-ment from many different sources, soat this time, everyone can acknowl-edge that using Cloud Computing willallow data transmission to becomequicker and more easily managed;however, there is a common concernabout information security, and all of asudden a shadow has been cast onCloud’s originally bright future. Thistells us that information security is anextremely important cornerstone in thedevelopment of Cloud Computing!

The prospect of data security incloud computing has security profes-sionals and CXO community taking acautious approach. The main reasonsprings from the sense that they do notfeel they have a good control of thedata out in the cloud. One of the morecritical issued is the relative lack ofcontrol of end user, especially when

the user is outside the perimeter of theenterprise.

What they need to look at?It is important for the CXO commu-nity to look at products or solutionsthat are designed to give a securityboost in virtualized and cloud envi-ronments. Solution that is designed togive enterprises control of security fordata stored in public, private or hybridclouds is ideal. This is because, whilecloud service providers have responsi-bility, enterprises are left holding thebag in the case of a cloud securitybreach, a solution as mentioned earlieris designed to stop all that by leverag-ing encryption key-management tech-nology as a service. Such solution

works by giving enterprises controlover their own encryption key, ensur-ing that they are the only ones who canaccess sensitive data. In the eventual-ity of a breach, anyone without thatkey would not be able to access the in-frastructure.

It is also critical for CXOs to lookat a solution that can help them toavoid vendor lock-in. If one looks atwhat the cloud does in terms of con-trolling data, it poses some new chal-lenges. A hosted key management anddata encryption service designed togive enterprises more control overdata stored in public, private or hybridclouds. So, it also addresses the chal-lenge of control. A hosted key man-agement and data encryption servicewill certainly facilitate the movementbetween the datacenter and the cloudand enterprises can decide when andwhere keys are released and securevolumes are accessed as well as estab-lish accountability over data accessand key deployment with logging andaudit functionality.

A hosted key management anddata encryption service will help theenterprises to go out there and take ad-vantage of the cloud economics andthe flexibility that the cloud has tooffer. In addition it will secure theircloud environment effectively.

Cloud Computing’sToughest Obstacle!

0 10 20 30 40

38%

34%

29%

26%

26%

9%

38%

7%

Improve delivery of applications/services

Reduce operating sta!/expense

Lower total cost of ownership of hardware infrastructure

Improve productivity/mobility

Enable consumer devices in corporate network

Dont plan to change IT at campus/edge

Don’t know / NA

Security

About authorAmit Nath, Country Manager,India & SAARC, Trend Micro

TTeecchhnnoollooggyy:: By Amit Nath

The consumer purchase rates for personal computers andmobile phones (excluding smartphones) will decline by 39percent and 56 percent this year compared with last year, re-spectively, says a new accenture survey. By contrast, buyingrates of 3dTVs (three-dimensional TVs) are expected to rise500 percent; tablet computers 160 percent; ebook readers133 percent; and smartphones 26 percent. The survey fo-cused on usage and spending on 19 different consumer elec-tronics technologies among more than 8,000 consumers ineight countries in both emerging markets and developedeconomies: Brazil, China, india, russia, France, Germany,Japan and the United states.

QuickFacts

As more enterprises use virtual servers, they will be search-ing for security solutions that will protect the server hostingthe virtualized environment; the hypervisor; and shield thevirtual servers from malware and hacker attacks


Today, an alarming increase incrime rate and theft, alongwith the associated fear ofterrorism, is forcing organi-zations to lay greater empha-

sis on physical security. As security risksincrease, the need to visually monitor andrecord security events in an organization’senvironment is growing in importance andvideo surveillance is becoming a keycomponent of physical safety and securityin sectors like public transport, hospitality,airports, BFSI and education.

Investments in physical security be-come more effective and can cost lesswhen tied together over an existing IP net-work and organizations can benefit fromearly threat detection, faster response, andenhanced collaboration with local law en-forcement organizations. Using the net-work as an open, scalable platform forintegrating security helps organizations toincrease operational flexibility, improveprotection capabilities, and reduce bothrisk and cost of ownership.

Availability of a comprehensive com-munication solution, i.e., an integrated re-sponse management system enablesgreater interoperability and better co-ordi-nation between various security agenciesand personnel for suitably managingemergencies. Information gathered byeach agency is readily available to everyother agency involved in an emergency,and each agency can respond accordingly.Since IP-based surveillance provides theability to access data/ footage from any re-mote location over the internet, security orother authorized personnel can have fasteraccess to relevant information duringemergency.

Compared to traditional CCTV cam-eras, the digital infrastructure is scalableand there is no limit to the number of de-vices that can be added to the network.

Video surveillance and securityOrganizations that deploy video surveil-lance stand to benefit from being able tomonitor a facility’s environment, people,and assets in real time and record eventsfor subsequent investigation, proof ofcompliance / audit purposes. The value ofvideo surveillance has grown significantlywith the introduction of motion, heat, andsound detection sensors as well as sophis-ticated video analytics.

Physical security solutions that com-bine IP video surveillance, access control,and incident response, are easy to manageand support. They are based on open stan-dards, and can easily be integrated withproducts from various other agencies tomeet specific requirements across industryverticals such as education, transport, re-tail and healthcare.

Video analytics which enables com-puter processing and analysis of videohelps to alert operators or generate alarmsbased on specific events- such as peopleentering the field of view, the direction ofan object, or the removal of an item fromthe field of view. The flexibility of wherevideo analytics can be deployed and whocan use it gets enhanced when used on anIP network because the network providesthe video to be analyzed and also gener-ates reports that can be distributed any-where the network goes.

In addition to physical security, videomonitoring and surveillance can come ofuse in many other areas as well. In trans-portation for example, video surveillancesystems can help to monitor traffic con-gestion; in retail, video can be helpful inidentifying customer movements in thestore, or serve to alert the managementwhen the number of checkout lines need achange. Some video analytics packageseven offer the ability to identify a liquid

spill on the sea and generate an alert en-abling faster response by custodial serv-ices, thus avoiding a slip and fall situation.Product and package shipment operationscan also use recorded video to help trackand validate the movement of cargo or lo-cate lost packages. With time video sur-veillance has evolved not only in itsapplication, but also in its deployment.Today the availability of the fourth gener-ation video surveillance systems has madeit possible to provide enhanced securitywherever required. These solutions pro-vide a unified interface that gives safetypersonnel a higher level of situationalawareness and allows intelligent decisionsto be made more quickly. Customers canbuild cost-effective, modular physical se-curity solutions that are both best-in-classand interoperable.

These next generation video surveil-lance architectures provide increased reli-ability, higher system availability, greaterutility (any camera to any monitoring orrecording device for any application, any-where), increased accessibility and mobil-ity. Multivendor interoperability ensuresthat these solutions can be used to enhanceother building management system capa-bilities thereby reducing capital and oper-ational expenditures.

By converging various applicationsand technologies on the IP network,fourth-generation video surveillance pro-vides additional benefits and advantagesover preceding generations. Fourth gener-ation surveillance solutions also extend thecapability of video surveillance gateways(enhanced encoders and decoders) and thenetwork video recorder (NVR), and allowlegacy matrix switches to be replaced bystandard and typically lower-cost Ethernetswitching platforms.

Since they help to collapse videoswitching functions onto an existing Eth-

ernet switch environment, these solutionsreduce the complexity and lower the costof deploying a video surveillance solu-tion. They also provide video surveil-lance system owners with the flexibilityto design solutions tailored to theirunique requirements. As part of an opennetwork, operators can create policies al-lowing the inherent value of the video, asa source of information, to be used byother safety and security applications, aswell as other nontraditional business ap-plications.

The Ethernet switch environmentprovided by the network infrastructureintegrates the video stream provided bythe NVR when used with PCs for moni-toring and reviewing video. Video en-coders can make use of the pervasive IPnetwork cabling infrastructure instead ofthe redundant cabling infrastructures,while long-range camera deploymentscan benefit from the complete elimina-tion of fiber multiplexers and distributionamplifiers, thereby reducing deploymentcosts.

Fourth generation video surveillancesystems are supported by the Video Sur-veillance Manager (VSM) software

which provides a browser-based user in-terface to collect, manage, record /archive and distribute video from multi-ple third party video encoders and IPcameras. This enables operators andusers to easily access live or recordedvideo using a PC, or any other browserequipped device in remote and mobileenvironments. Additionally, VSM allowsfor easier integration with other networkapplications including third party com-mand and control software.

Fourth generation video surveillancesystems are characterized by interoper-ability which helps video surveillancesystem gateways convert or translate pro-prietary vendor-specific video signalsand formats into a common format andshare video information with other sys-tems via that common format. It enablesthe integration of video surveillance withaccess control and intrusion detectionwithout the need for a centralized server.This ability to integrate, or unify the sur-veillance system with other alarm sys-tems, increases the effectiveness ofsecurity operations and reduces thechances of responding to false alarms.For instance, with video surveillance, a

security officer can correctly determineif the source of a ‘door-forced alarm’ wasa gust of wind or an intruder.

The availability of a common formatfor video that is transmitted across the IPnetwork also provides the ability to addnew functions such as video analyticsanywhere in the network. Whether at theedge of the network, embedded in thecamera, in the encoder, or centralized inthe monitoring center, a common formatenables the same video analytics pro-gram to be used for reporting and canvaried based on specific circumstances.

When the NVR also supports a web-browser-based graphical user interfaceand is complemented with videotranscoding capabilities, video surveil-lance monitoring and reviewing can beprovide first responders and their cen-tralized safety and security commandcontrol with an unparalleled level of in-formation and collaborative capabilities.

Services for video surveillance In order to provide the required levelof physical safety and security thatfourth generation surveillance solu-tions promise, there is a need to inte-grate the most effective designs,products, and services to comprehen-sively deliver safety and security thatmeet the customer needs. An inte-grated, services-led solution approachhelps to effectively provide emergencyresponse systems for corporate cam-puses, hotels, schools, critical infra-structure sites, transportation facilitiesincluding airports, and cities.

Services that help to design andtest various security solutions deploythe solution and its supporting man-agement systems; as well provide thedetailed operational plans add to cus-tomer benefit. Such services mustalso provide the support needed toplan for and implement the new so-lution components and/or migrate ex-isting systems, as well as executingand recording the results of the ac-ceptance tests that validate success-ful deployment.

Technology Play in Physical Safety and Security

The author is Sr. Vice President – Advanced Services, Cisco Systems

TECHNOLOGY By Rakesh Goyal


risk management solutions. Going for-ward, banks have to demonstrate com-pliance to RBI’s mandate once in sixmonths. Most of the banks have a pri-mary location where their IT applica-tions run and they also have analternate site, like any other city wherethey have the capability to bring uptheir IT applications if the primary sitegoes down. Data which includes cus-tomer account details are replicatedfrom the primary site to the alternatesite on a regular basis.

Closely linked are the securitiesmarket, buying or selling shares willhave a DMAT account. The stock ex-change is sustained and driven by ITapplications. The market regulator forthe stock market is the Securities andExchange Board of India (SEBI).SEBI follows regulations which wouldrequire depositories who participate inthe market to demonstrate their riskmanagement system including the dis-aster recovery capabilities of IT appli-cations.

There is lot of personal data thatthe government holds, most of it is onpaper but there are huge amount of e-governance projects moving us fromthe paper to the digital world. The Na-tional e-Governance website hastremendous information on ongoing e-governance initiatives. There are proj-ects initiated by central governmentand some are introduced by state gov-ernment. The Government has ap-proved a Common Services Centers(CSCs) Scheme for providing supportto establish 100,000 Common Serv-ices Centers in 600,000 villages ofIndia. The objective of the CSC is todevelop a platform which can enableGovernment, Private and Social sectororganizations to align their social andcommercial goals for the benefit of therural population of the country througha combination of IT-based as well asnon-IT-based services. A state widearea network (SWAN) is been as-signed to network states and districthead quarters. Various states are in-

vesting in State Data Centers (SDC) asa key enabler. State Data Center’sgoals are to consolidate services, ap-plications and infrastructure to provideefficient electronic delivery of G2G,G2C and G2B services. State DataCentre will provide many functionali-ties and some of the key functionali-ties are Central Repository of theState, Secure Data Storage, Online De-livery of Services, Citizen Informa-tion/Services Portal, State IntranetPortal, Disaster Recovery, RemoteManagement and Service Integrationand more. SDCs also provides betteroperation and management controland minimize overall cost of DataManagement, IT Resource Manage-ment, Deployment and other costs.

There are several complex projectsthat have the potential to change andenhance the way of getting our workdone with the government. Some ofthe big projects are:� National Citizen Database – UID

project� Passport, Immigration� Income Tax� E-Courts� Land Records

While the detailed scope and re-quirement for each of these projects,which involve citizen’s data is notavailable, I am eager to understand the

kind of information recovery metricseach of these projects are aiming tosatisfy. There are two important met-rics that dictate how soon data and anIT application will be made available,if it goes down. The recovery point isa measure on how much informationcan be lost without adversely impact-ing the service. If you are transactingat a bank’s ATM and if the ATM ap-plication crashes, you tend to panicand hope no information is lost; elseyour bank account may not be accu-rate. In this case the Recovery Pointfor the ATM application is zero. Con-sidering the land records application,if the application becomes unavail-able, as citizens we may have to waitup to two hours for the application tobe available again. In this case the Re-covery Time for the land records ap-plication is two hours.

Regulation in banking has gone along way in ensuring that banks havebusiness continuity and Disaster Re-covery plan that protects integrity andsecurity of customer information.Similarly, the need is now for regula-tion of e-Governance projects wherecitizen information and services are atstake. Such a regulation must mandaterecovery metrics based on the natureof information and sensitivity of theservices provided. The Right to Infor-mation act is a momentous step for cit-izens, in addition we need to add theright to have citizen’s information pro-tected and available in a timely man-ner. The regulation must require thegovernment agency to demonstrate theability to continue business withinspecified recovery metrics after a dis-aster strikes. As we gradually move toan e-governance model, informationand process are captured and imple-mented using IT applications, it is im-perative that we have regulations thatforces government agencies to con-sider information protection, recoveryand build appropriate technology so-lutions and process to ensure citizen’srights and expectations are met.

The Need for disaster recovery management solutions in indian Banks

An insider’s view on thestate of information man-agement in the IndianBanking sector and theneed for a strong Disaster

Recovery Management (SRM) strategyin the space

We are in the 21st century, and it isnot surprising that we have movedahead in terms of economy, technol-ogy and globalization. If one could sitand analyze the radical transformationfrom the past to present, it is quite as-tonishing. There was a time whereone had to manage all the personal and

official data manually and undoubt-edly, it took up a lot of time. This is notthe case in the present scenario, wheretime and work are digitally driven.Globalization has been both – key inexpanding the opportunities availableto Banking sectors, and tough in theface of competition, especially withrecent economic concerns.

I have my email, my photos, songsand few documents in my server foreasy access, but what about the rest ofthe information that keeps life hum-ming along? Banking details, passport,driving license, income tax and insur-

ance details and other important docu-ments which are essential for yourbusiness.

The banking industry is perhaps onthe forefront of using IT enabled serv-ices; almost all listed banks and sev-eral mid-cap banks have deployed ITapplications for core banking. Corebanking enables the bank to offer cus-tomer services anywhere across theglobe. The Reserve Bank of India, theregulatory body for banks has set upmandates to deploy disaster recoveryand business continuity plan and en-sure that all banks have access to the

The author is Co-founder & Vice-President - Products at Sanovi Technologies.

BUSINESS By Lakshman Narayanaswamy

Almost all listedbanks and Mid- Cap bankshave deployed ITapplications forcore banking, andthis enables themto offer customerservice across theglobe

How is CDC Software positioned inIndia?CDC Software India is the company’sbiggest development center across theglobe and with 75 percent of developmentwork happening from here. At 250 strongworkforce, a lot of innovation in the com-pany’s product portfolio has been happen-ing from the India center. Theseinnovations majorly find their way in theUS and other developed markets but manyof our products are now paving in roads toIndian market. The prime focus in Indiahas been the ‘Pivotal CRM’ offering sincepast seven years. 90 percent of the 6.0 ver-sion of Pivotal was being developed inIndia and taking it ahead, the next versionwould be 100 percent made in India. CDCSoftware wants India to be a profit centrefrom presently a cost centre. There is a bigevolution in the customer services land-scape across enterprises, as customers de-sire to provide more customer services andgain a competitive edge through CRM.The enterprise class feature set of CRM isexpensive, but we provide enterprise classproducts at affordable points for verticalslike FSI, Government. Other key focusedofferings include Ross Enterprise –a suiteof ERP for process manufacturers andCDC factory.

Which are the major areas of interestfor CDC Software?For CDC, the prime verticals of interestare those where governance, risk manage-

ment and compliance (GRC) plays amajor role. Hence, F&B (food and bever-age) is the largest market globally sinceWith FDA in the US and similar regula-tory bodies in European countries keep astrict vigilance in terms of quality of foodmaterials being imported into their coun-try. Apart from this, process manufactur-ing which includes life sciences and steeland natural products, is the second largestmarket. Finally it is the BFSI sector whichalso sees GRC playing an important role.

What are the challenges when ventur-ing into Indian markets?In India the major challenge we find isthe lack of stringent regulations. For ex-ample, in case of F&B there is not a stan-dard regulatory body that keeps avigilant eye on vendors, manufacturingunits, retail chains and others. In such acase, when an emergency strikes, recallof a particular brand/batch of products isquiet a chaotic process. Hence, currently,we are in the process of evangelizinglarge retail chains and corporate housesin this sector about the advantages of de-ploying an ERP/CRP solution like ours.Secondly, the turn around rate of cus-tomers is quiet delayed here. A potentialclient may understand the benefits of de-ploying an ERP solution but there con-tinues to be a lack of urgency amongstthem. But this is a case majorly in theF&B segment.

On the contrary, we have seen quite a

traction in the BFSI segment. With thecompetitiveness amongst the major play-ers increasing day by day, the differenti-ating factor amongst them is customerrelationship/ retention and satisfaction.Hence, there has been a lot of demandfor our CRM solutions. Currently wehave about 18 clients in this vertical in-cluding ICICI, Max New York Life In-surance, SEBI and more.

How do you target the potential cus-tomers?The broad strategy is to appoint two tothree specialized partners per product.We are identifying partners with strongdomain knowledge across a particularvertical. We appointed 5 VARs acrossIndia who implement and also enhanceour solutions as per customer needs. Weare keen to align with partners who be-lieve in enhancing the services businessof their customers. For CRM, we havefranchisee partner programs wherein weinvest in small start up reseller compa-nies. There is more commitment as thesepartners are more focused to work withsingle vendor.

What are the future plans?We see huge opportunity in India as amarket. With advent of cloud computing,we see a large potential in the SME seg-ment. Apart from the existing verticals,higher education, wellness (preventivehealthcare), e-governance (RTI) arepromising areas of opportunity. We alsohope to expand in terms of work force thisyear. In terms of product portfolio, wehave lauched several new products andhave been growing both organically andin-organically (through acquisitions).Since 2009, we have made three acquisi-tions and would be interested to do somemore if the right opportunity presents. Ad-ditionally we have been making some mi-nority investments of up to $3 million inpromising companies that complimentour product portfolio.


Betting high on theenterprise softwaremarketThe enterprise market in India is seeing a pivotal rise. The estimatedgrowth for ERP, CRM and SCM solutions are expected to grow by 23-25percent between 2013 and 2015. With opportunities galore, CDC Soft-ware hopes to strike right and capture a chunk of this pie. In a candidconversation with SmartTechie, Nagaraja Prakasam, MD, CDC SoftwareIndia talks about company’s plan of action.

Nagaraja Prakasam

SiliconIndia MarketingSymposium was held inBangalore on Feb 04th, anexceptional event whichassisted marketers to ap-

proach National and InternationalMarketing challenges with fresh think-ing. This event brought in several mar-keting leaders, professionals andpractitioners at the single platform toexplore effective marketing methodsand Strategies. This conference ad-dressed different marketing & brand-ing topics in both consumer andbusiness-to-business contexts, includ-ing high technology products, serv-ices, and manufactured goods.

The event kick started with the‘Market Research for Brands using themobile’ by Sanjay Swamy, Chairman,ZipDial. Then it moved on the align-ment of Sales and Marketing- Makinga case on that we had Kaushal Veluri,Director Marketing from Citrix whosaid “It is critical that sales and mar-keting align for the overall success ofthe organization. Organizations inwhich sales and marketing are alignedsee a 20 percent growth in their annualrevenue, according to a study by Ab-erdeen Group. Also the two issues thatsales and marketing face in their align-ment are ‘perception’ & ‘Communica-tion’ to get them to align,organizations must follow the

TAG’EM process i.e Talk, agree, goal,execute and measure”

Then the conference moved onto the social web trends for marketingand how to leverage these trends, andhow marketers need to become morecreative and different to get noticed inthe Social web, so that their businesses

will start finding ROI in Social Media.Ravish from Regalix shared histhoughts on this at our event.

Another important aspect is theSocial Media Marketing, Shekhar Ra-mamurthy, Deputy President, UnitedBreweries says “Social media is rap-idly evolving and marketers cannot ig-nore it. To harness its potential youhave to listen, interact and engage withconsumers in interesting and innova-tive ways”.

We had Krishna Kumar, Vice

President, Reliance ADA groupstelling us about how the customerspermission is absolutely necessarywhilst doing any kind of mobile mar-keting, otherwise the number of"DND" (Do not Disturb) requests willincrease and the number of responsesdecrease.

Overall, the event witnessed anaudience of 500 marketing profession-als. The audience as well as the speak-ers found it a great platform forinteraction.

The conference proved to be aneye opener about how for next threeyears, major marketing challenges willbe based on the impact of technologyon communication with target audi-ences – current and prospective. In-dian marketing scene really looksbright for the future.

Galore at SiliconIndia Marketing Symposium

Strate iesarketingM

EVENT By Akanksha RavindranBUyErS PErSPECTIVE


Are you a Smart HRManager? This wasthe theme of the oneday Siliconindia HRSymposium held on

Februrary 26 in Bangalore. Thesymposium gathered over 200 HRprofessionals who came in discussthe implementations and impact ofHR technologies. The event pro-vided exceptional networking be-tween the Human Resourceexecutives, HR Professionals, Con-sultants, Academicians, Researchersand the speakers, brought all ofthem on a single platform to explorevarious aspects of the theme “SmartHR Managers of 2011”.

Smart HR managers adopt astructured approach for making theirlife easy while hiring new peopleand retaining the existing ones. Thisstructured approach to talent man-agement involves systematicprocesses at each stage of human re-source management- from searchingtalent, managing talent and talentengagement. The event had PrithviShergill, Senior Vice President,Human Resources, Inclusion andDiversity - Accenture India whoshared his expert views on this atour event.

A session on ‘Organization’s Fu-ture: Employee learning & develop-ment’ was addressed by Dr PallabBandyopadhyay, Director HumanResources, Citrix Systems who said,“Current trends in Learning and De-velopment is to make people learnin a manner so that they feel they arein control, so trainers are out and fa-cilitators are in, learning is more ho-listic now and the emphasis onmaking them learn "Why" first be-fore "How" In a scenario where em-phasis has shifted from employmentto employability you will not existif you do not learn and develop con-tinuously”.

Among the other aspects of HRtechnologies and competencies thatwere addressed at the event, was thetopic ‘Outsourcing: A strategic solu-tion’ for which Nayana Prabhu,Lead Consultant Corporate HRDfrom Wipro, said, “To any processthat can be standardized and there-fore needs to be repeated again andagain without any change is ripe forbeing ‘outsourced’. The HRprocesses that do not lend them-selves to be outsourced are culturebuilding, creating the originationsidentity & the talent buildingprocesses”.

Overall it was an enriching sym-posium for all HR professionals,which provided an exposure to di-verse areas such as Organizationalmanagement, Personnel administra-tion, Manpower management, andIndustrial management from excel-lent speakers who gave in their ex-pert views and presentations ondifferent topics.

The event was sponsored byQuadmo Solutions. Rohit Rawal,Director, QuadMo Solutions said,"It was a great event, with many em-inent HR speakers and experiencedHR professionals in the audience.

What was quite exciting to us asa firm was the excitement and theeagerness among HR practitionersto launch innovative rewards &recognition initiatives in their firms,in order to enhance employee reten-tion. Because, clearly, the traditionalR&R policies have not yielded thedesired results and employees allacross are now expecting somethingreally refreshing in this space."

The other partners who helpedbring this event to a successful cul-mination were Adrenalin, Hire-mantra, TataMcgraw Hill, ResumeFox and Aim Plus Staffing Solutions.

come together @ Silicon India HR Symposium

200HR Professionals

EVENTS By Akanksha Ravindran

Where do you see the next big op-portunity in India?Indian IT industry is an exciting placeto be and can be categorized in 2 parts:e-governance and private sector. In thegovt. sector there is tremendous trac-tion, especially in the IMS space. AtPrithvi, we are building three data cen-ters in India for Haryana, Nagalandand Maharashtra governments fortheir respective e-governance initia-tives.

How is the U.S. market post reces-sion?We see spending rebounding. The ITspend by companies has increased. Inboth India and U.S. there has beenemergence and adoption of new tech-nologies, the prime being Business In-telligence. Cloud computing andbusiness process management is otherareas of opportunity. Telecom engi-neering services is one of the major of-ferings for this market and hence theU.S. and Brazil is important and weare working on lot of new technolo-gies like long term evolution, 3G, Wi-Max and more.

How do you stay ahead of competi-tion?Every mid sized company in India is acompetition to each other. For us it isthe specialized services where we

bring an edge. For example, in analyt-ics, we are one of the first companiesto start an R&D division six ears ago.Prithvi as a services company has aR&D division where we have do re-searches solving customer problems.The R&D division churns out lots ofsolutions, many of which have con-verted to expert business solutions.This has become a big differentiatorin terms of the quality of services wecan offer in these specialized areas.We can beat the best in the world inthese areas. Today, our clientele in-cludes Fortune 50 companies acrossverticals like Telecom, BFSI, Retailand Healthcare.

What are the challenges?Though spending amongst clients isincreasing but the challenge we seeis in the margin pressure. We see cus-tomers in the U.S. wanting to do va-riety of services but at a lower rate.This is the problem that small andmid size companies in India are grap-pling with today. The top fiveIT/ITeS players can handle this butthe mid sized companies will have toimprovise to handle the demands. Wefeel that developing expertise inniche areas like analytics and mobil-ity services will help us increase ourmargins. Next is the ability to bring adifferentiation to the customer’s plateas compared to the competitionwhich we have fairly done success-fully.

What are the future plans?We hope to become the pre-eminentprovider in India for telecom engi-neering services, in terms of main-taining and running networks forcompanies. The same will be the casein India, Brazil, Canada, U.S. andother countries. We also see thatCloud and SI as a service line wouldstart to play a much bigger role in theway emerging markets go forward. Innext five years we would see theseareas pushing and becoming a largerpie of the revenue.

Founded in ‘98, Prithvi Info Solutions is rapidly growing IT services provider with specializedfocus on telecom engineering and services. The company went public in 2005 and today hasemerged to be a $400 million multinational information and communications technology com-pany. In a candid interview with SmartTechie, Nitin Vyakarnam, AVP - Global Marketing andAliances, Prithvi Information Solutions, talks about the current market scenario, challenges andnew areas of opportunities mid sized companies.

Building expertise in specializedTechnology offerings

Nitin Vyakarnam

BUyErS PErSPECTIVE


The history of women inleadership roles alwaysspeaks of struggle and hardwork. Challenges surroundher from her early child-

hood, but she is intelligent and sharp, herwit, charm, ambition and abilities to beinfluential have led her to be a leader.SiliconIndia organized the WomenLeadership Summit for all ‘her’ achieve-ments on 25 Feb 2011 across five citiesin India at Pune, Delhi, Bangalore,Mumbai and Chennai and on March12th in Hyderabad. The event saw over600 corporate delegates—mid and sen-ior level women executives in each citycome together to celebrate the greatstrides women are making in the busi-ness world.

Ascending the Corporate LadderMoving up is a challenge, either as atech lead or biz lead. What does it take tomake the cut? How to break through thebarriers? Speakers shared their goodtimes and not so good times, as they ex-amined the formulas for success, and en-lightened those who do not alreadyknow about the mountains they still haveto climb.

Sujitha Karnad, Chief Transforma-tion Officer, Tech Mahindra said,“Women are competent, qualified andare able to excel in several fields andhave broken the myths of glass ceilingsand walls. Women still give family highpriority while making career decisions,but always come back with renewed en-ergy to take on more responsibilities.

Much has to be done to support womenin the mid parts of their career to ensurethat they reach higher echelons of man-agement, and I think this will certainlyhappen with time.”

Sudha Gopalakrishnan, Sr. VP, Po-laris Software) and Valsala Vijaykumar,Asst. GM, Canara Bank, shared theirviews on “Ascending the CorporateLadder” at the Chennai event, and thequalities that women need to work on toenable ourselves in the level playingfield at that level. While focusing onthese attributes they explained howsome of the inherent qualities helpwomen in such positions and talkedabout the need for understanding andbridging the gap. They both echoed thethought in unison that at those levels itis more about how well the team doesand no more a question of how capable

an individual is. “What makes women leaders dis-

tinctively different is that their (inherent)true self nature always keeps them cen-tered in their being, thus bringing highlevels of sensitivity and intuition, empa-thy and collaborative approach, in addi-tion to the stereotype traits that a maleleader brings to the workplace. Havingsaid this, it is important to say that it isnot a question of who is better. Male orfemale leaders are as adept, or as bad. Itis always the man or woman in ques-tion,” said Ranjana Maitra, GeneralManager - Global Head Healthcare &Manufacturing BPO, Wipro at theMumbai event.

Concluding, Seema Grover, Associ-ate Director Mergers and Acquisitions,Dr.Reddys Laboratories said, “To ascendthe corporate ladder be loyal to yourself.

Put yourself first in any competitivework environment. Performance andhard work matters. You get what you ne-gotiate. Ask for higher roles, ask forhigher responsibilities. Be assertive.Have mentors.A mentor knows best, socultivate relationships with peoplewhose judgment you trust and go outand network. Your network is your job.”

Women’s Work: The Great JugglingActEvery woman, no matter what age orstage in life, finds herself juggling manypriorities, responsibilities, relationships,and pressures.

“Women are naturally endowed withempathy, ability to multitask and dele-gate. These are critical traits that helpwomen professionals prioritize both atwork and home. It is not humanly possi-ble to be good at everything, so pick thechoices you want to run with and dothem very well. Support of the family isextremely important,” explained Purn-ima Menon, Head Marketing, Infosys.

Adding to this Padmini Sundaram,Vice President, HSBC bank said, “Per-sonal, professional and social commit-ment and excellence is interlinked andnon-exclusive. Participation in social ini-tiatives which reach grass root helpedme become a better manager and a bet-ter human being. In India, the balancingact is a lot easier with the social struc-ture and support system that we womenhave. Building bridges and nurturing the

circle of family, friends and professionalnetwork is the key to maintaining thisbalance.”

The panelists also cited instances ofhow they divided work and inculcatedsupport from children as well. Gita Ra-machandran, Vice President ERP & IT,Bharat Petroleum said, “Your work lifebalance is in your hands. Work life bal-ance is a state of well being that a per-son can reach, which is self determined,and which allows one to manage multi-ple responsibilities at work, home, andin community effectively and whichsupports physical, emotional, family,and community health, but withoutgrief, stress , guilt or negative impact.”

To strike a balance be aware of whatgives you fulfillment and what causesyou stress, exercise the power of choiceby embracing those which nourish you,and releasing those which drain you andExperience more energy and power inyour life. The more you realize that yourlife is created by your choices you be-come more energetic, powerful and guiltfree. You will have the life you want andnot the life you end up with.

“Learn to prioritize and delegate,that will ensure one spends time only onimportant aspects and that will give timefor self and growth, One need not beliked by all, discern and say ‘no’ whererequired and ask for help as necessary.Spend at least 15 minutes in a day forone self. Never carry guilt” said RamaniB Shetty, Vice President, TCS.

At the Chennai event, Devi Jayara-man, VP, Mphasis drew an analogy onhow an average women juggles her actwith the various tasks at hand and it isnot a novel idea that the IT industry hasbrought it. Pramila Hari Center Head -AM, Logica India brought in the per-spective of the amount of planning andscheduling that is required to juggle thevarious acts. Gayathri Viswanathan,Vice President Delivery, Maarga Sys-tems, gave an example of how she hasextended the IT concept of “Daily Hud-dle” in her family and how this helpsthem in managing their expectations and

have clarity on what needs to be ad-dressed. When the rest of the panelspoke about how women juggle betweenwork, family and kids, it brought in theperspective that juggling is not neces-sarily restricted to working moms andeach one of us juggle every day and tryto give our best with the changing prior-ities. It is essential to know which ball todrop at any point in time when things getout of hand.

Priya Ganesh, Global Solution Ar-chitect, CapGemini, shared her experi-ence when she worked in a village aspart of an NGO and how an uneducatedlady (called “The Administrator”) jug-gled things in her life to raise her threedaughters and served the NGO too whilebeing a part of it.

Life is about the choices that youmake and you need to be aware of thechoices you have and then be happywith whatever you decide. You need toprioritize different things at differenttimes of your life, for instance, you willhave times when your career takes highpriority and your personal life takes aback seat and times when the oppositehappens. You need to make a consciouschoice at these times and be satisfiedwith these decisions. Make sure yourhome is set up in a way to support yourcareer aspirations, get help where youneed it, be it through family or hiredhelp. “There is no pride in cookingevery meal on your own,” said ShireenAlam, Director, Sapient.

“Balancing is an act that we grow updoing — from early years at school, tohigher education, profession and work.Therefore, the challenge of balancingshould be treated as only transactional.While making a choice, or creating a‘so-called balance’, we will surely haveto let go of something - basically a lesserpriority will need to be let go. Once wedecide on what is lesser priority, then let-ting go should not be a painful process.Ultimately, the stress that we feel interms of ‘balancing’ is best dealt throughthe mind - take a decision, come to peacewith it and then stay convinced about it.

An InsightWomen in Leadership



In our Indian context, we are blessedwith a family support system which isbetter than many other parts of the worldand this should be leveraged to bringsemblance in life,” said Veenu Jaichand,COO, Centum WorkSkills (A Bharti As-sociate & NSDC) at the Delhi event.

Kavitha Dhar, Director, WorldconTechnologies, speaking on the sametopic said, “Meaning - Managing Energy- Positive Framing - Connecting – En-gaging; these 5 dimensions of leadershiphelp an individual with juggling multi-ple roles. One needs to find meaning inwhat one does, manage energy so thatone has it when one needs it, with posi-

tive mindset and positive approach tolife, have an optimistic mindset thennothing is impossible, stay in touch withthe environment, society, self so thatthere is a meaning to what one does andfinally engage in voicing your thoughts,take risks, make choices and be respon-sible for what one chooses.”

The Women Innovators Throughout history famous female in-ventors and mostly have contributedenormously to the world of invention.Women inventors are responsible for awide variety of inventions that we all en-counter in our daily lives, from the au-tomatic dishwasher to life savingmedical inventions. What is the drivingforce for women innovators that moti-vates them to excel? Panelists all acrossthe cities shared their personal experi-ences and advice.

Srividya S, Vice President, HCL Info

systems said, “Innovators are forwardthinking, create new ideas, market thoseideas and create their patents in the soci-ety. Women as innovators / entrepre-neurs bring value to enterprise in a rapidchanging world. Common barriers towomen’s advancement as innovators –lack of definite development opportuni-ties, imbalance of recognition and ade-quate support with excessive difficulties,work-life balance. Some of the drivingforces for women innovators to excelare:a. Motivation – with respect to wages,job security, intrinsic motivation, work-ing condition et al,

b. Self-efficacy - Women’s self-efficacyis correlated to achievement and positiveinteractions and it is hypotheticallyproved that high self-efficacy womenare likely to excel and engage in moreinnovative behavior,c. Women empowerment – Self-defin-ing, authenticity, creativity, increased di-versity in thinking, freedom to expressideas and innovations without con-straints and d. Leadership style - Women use amore participative or democratic and aless autocratic or directive leadershipstyle - a pattern well suited to 21-centuryglobal organizations.”

“The contribution made by womeninnovators as patent holders and inven-tors is only around 10 percent across theglobe. It is imperative for women to takean active role in research and innovation.Women have all the characteristics suchas intelligence, patience and diligence to

be successful researchers and innova-tors,” said Shyamala Jayaraman, VicePresident - R&D, Ramco Systems.

Giving a different perspective on In-novation, Rohini Shankar, Senior Busi-ness Analyst, L&T Infotech, said,“Innovation — many people link thisword straight away to invention (and thisis right in many cases) and a perceptioncomes out of a disruptive nature.” Hereis what she thinks is important:� The application of innovation in

everyday life is what will improvequality of life/comfort and in mostcases should be coupled with costsand values. The key is that lots ofmoney is globally being spent onR&D across private and govern-ment sectors and as result disruptiveinvention is being created in silos. Intoday’s context it is important to un-derstand the applicability across dif-ferent areas. A case in point is theareas of Nano particles, different in-dustries are discovering new parti-cles which are being utilized inaltogether different industries for ex-ample Nano research in the superconductor industry is paving theway for smarter drug deliveries.

� Another important aspect of Inno-vation is to incrementally improveon processes and products on a con-tinuous basis. Some times whattechnologies have been prevalentfor a long time and yet remained pe-ripheral become mainstream due tomultitude factors including marketreadiness, growth of complement-ing technologies etc. A case pointhere, would be the innovative appli-cation of TeleHealth which has beenin existence for some time. With theboom in telecommunication tech-nologies and integration of medicaland other devices with software ap-plications, TeleHealth will impactthe lives of millions of people in apositive way.”“Innovation is when the three meet

— what technology can accomplish,what is desirable to users and what is vi-

able in the market. Innovation has to bedone on all fronts – Technology, Process,Pricing and Offering. Innovative organ-ization is one which is nimble, bold andhas an engaged work force,” said Nan-dini A, AVP, GlobalLogic

Achieving Success: Turning every Ad-versity in to an Advantage

Sarita Bahl, Vice President andHead, Group Corporate Social Opportu-nities, Multi Commodity Exchange ofIndia said, “Women have all the quali-ties of a good leader, a good CEO. Noth-ing fazes her and adversity is her middlename”. “Adversity is as inevitable astaxes or death. When in a difficult phase- accept the situation, control your men-tal resistance, assess the best and worstcase scenarios and take positive steps,knowing that “This too shall pass”.More often than not, the situation is notas bad as we mentally make it out to be,and in retrospect, helps us move tosomething we would not have thoughtof if we did not face the adversity” saidAkila Jaikumar, Senior V.P & Director,Bodhtree Consulting.

Sujata Puranik Rakhra, Leader,Global Branding and Advertising, Dell,said, “It is critical that we recognize thatwe are different and celebrate our differ-ences without being diffident or defen-sive. Nevertheless, it is important thatwomen speak up when they encountergender discrimination, overt and covert.Adversity is not gender specific, al-though the challenges men and womenface may be different. A sense of confi-dence in one’s identity and professionalcapability will help turn adversity intoadvantage,” at the Bangalore edition ofthe event.

Adversities are inevitable, but suf-fering is optional, stressing on this wehad Tanuja Abburi, Global HR Director,Intelligroup who said, “Women handleadversity different from men and theirreaction to adversity is very diverse. Afew syndromes that women get caughtwhile handling an adversity are – ‘WhyMe Syndrome’, ‘Poor Me Syndrome’, ‘I

am the Victim Syndrome’, ‘Not GoodEnough Syndrome’ and others. Accept-ing and adapting to change or adversityis the first step towards benefiting fromit and turning it into opportunity. Adver-sity is a call to action. Allow adversityand change to wake you up, sharpenyour instincts and move you forward.”

It does not matter how many timesyou get knocked down. What matters ishow often you get back up.

Sharing Thoughts and ExperiencesDeepa Deo, Lead - India Leadership

Development, ThoughtWorks shared herviews on the overall event and said, “Itwas a heartening experience to meet, in-teract and share stories with so manybright and enthusiastic women profes-sionals at the Women’s Leadership Sum-mit on Friday. For such a largegathering, the strong sense of commu-nity and fellowship in the room wasamazing! I am sure a lot of us left theSummit with a rejuvenated sense of pur-pose.”

“The summit had a good mix ofwomen professionals from variouswalks of life including Healthcare, Edu-cation, IT, NGOs to name a few, whichled to rich and engaging discussionswith the audience. It is heartening to see100s of women leaders come together tolearn and share in events such as this.Hope to see a lot more men participate inupcoming events to brining in differentperspectives to the discussions!” saidNandini Sabanayagam, General Man-

ager, Global Accounts, UST Global.“It was indeed a pleasure to be there

among some eminent industry leadersand hear them talk. I had a good timesharing advices and my experienceswith other women folks and really got agood opportunity too to network withcouple of successful ladies from differ-ent organizations and domains,” ex-pressedNivedita Jain, Sr. Manager, NessTechnologies.

“It was a very enjoyable experiencefor me interacting with the aspiringwomen leaders from diverse back-grounds and sharing our own experi-ences. I was delighted to see that mostof us have self belief in our capabilitiesand are willing to challenge the mythsassociated with women leadership. Itwas also interesting to see that most ofus face similar challenges and forumslike this always enrich our experiencesand equip us better to face them in ourwork life” said Jaya Singh, SeniorManager, Texas Instruments.

“The Summit was a great forum forwomen to network and share view-points; topics that are usually consid-ered sensitive or close to heart, andwould otherwise not be discussed in allforums, were brought to the fore andthis helped open up new channels ofthinking. The ideas discussed duringthe Summit will also help reinforcewomen to stand by their beliefs, be fo-cused on work and not necessarily liveup to someone else’s expectations. Itwill allow women to pick a place forthemselves in the complexity of theirlives at work and at home; help themunderstand that they have to live theirlives to the best of their capabilities andaspirations, as good humans and notnecessarily as superwomen. Gender di-versity is not about men against womenbut about women finding their feet attheir own rhythm; this needs to evolveat a natural pace and I think the speak-ers at the forum were able to put up thisthought with conviction,” said SunithaLal, Business - HR Head – BPO,Mphasis.


Organizations and man-agers invest a lot of timeand effort in selectingand offering right candi-dates with the hope that

the selected candidate is excited aboutthe role and the opportunity and will set-tle down and contribute for a fairly longtime. But experience shows that nomore than half of new hires, particu-larly, in the management roles really“settle down.” This is increasingly be-coming the trend also with hiring indi-vidual contributors. What a wastedeffort! I would like to discuss this keyissue in this column to explore howbusiness and HR leaders can work onthis to save precious time and moneyand induct people better.

This reminds me of what the worldwitnessed with the Apollo 13 launchedin April 1970. This spaceship was crip-pled by a major failure in the cryogenic

oxygen system. The planned lunar land-ing had to be aborted. The Control sta-tion in Houston decided to ‘slingshot’the spaceship using the gravity of themoon. Lunar excursion module wasmodified to become the sort of“lifeboat” for the astronauts. This mod-ule designed to sustain two people fortwo days now had to sustain three peo-ple for four days. In short, this was a sit-uation that had no room for any erroreither on the ground or in space! If thespaceship’s trajectory was even a bit off,it would skip away from Earth’s atmos-phere beyond redemption.

On boarding key employees (or anyemployee for that matter) is no lesschallenging than the scene describedabove. It has all the challenge, excite-ment and uncertainty requiring carefulattention. Often times, it is left to the re-cruiter to handle this. The recruiters dotheir best which more often than not

turns out to be not good enough for thechallenge. Of all the reasons why earlyexits take place despite great momentsof truth during recruitment, one can rec-ognize several traps that organizationswalk into, out of their ignorance or moreoften their underestimation of the taskof integration.Seven Deadly Integration Traps:Studies in the area of new employee in-tegration suggest that there are severaltraps that must be recognized andavoided to “soft-land” the new hire.Many of these are present in almost allthe organizations, irrespective of sizeand geography. Let us list them here:�� Trap 1: Minimizing the chal-

lenge: Often done with good in-tention not to intimidate the newhire, this becomes even more com-plicated with the candidates’ oftennoticed tendency to exaggeratetheir capabilities!

�� Trap 2: Thrown into the Ocean:New employee comes on board anddiscovers that he is required toswim across the ocean and not aswimming pool

�� Trap 3: Team – leader styles mis-match:Excessive control or handsoff style of the newly hired man-ager creates a set of challenges forthe team and managers themselves

�� Trap 4: Relationship with Keystakeholders: The newly hiredmanager requires building strongrelationships not only with the teamthat reports, but with peers and sen-ior managers and other key stake-holders in functions likeprocurement, finance, business de-velopment and sales. Underesti-mating this can reduceeffectiveness

�� Trap 5: Living with the legacy ac-tions: The new manager often hasa plateful of issues either created orleft unaddressed by his or her pred-

ecessor. This is one of the major is-sues in our organizations today inthe absence of defined processes fordocumenting discussions andpromises before an incumbentmanager leaves the company

�� Trap 6: Lack of organizationsupport: Quite common, this in-volves a precarious situation wherethe new manager goes through eu-phoria for the first few days of join-ing and thereafter all the smiles andsupport vaporize! It is business asusual for everyone else, except thenew hire! The new employee is leftto fend for themselves or told that“you should catch up fast to be suc-cessful here, understand?”

�� Trap 7: Finding the right balanceTrap: This involves a situationwhere the manager is told either hisactions are too much too soon ortoo little. Not recognizing the factthat the new joiner needs encour-agement and guidance rather thandiscouragement and criticism is

often the cause of this trapIn reality, there are many more traps,

but I have only listed the most commonones that newly hired managers gothrough in the first 3 months of their as-sociation. Not paying attention to thesetraps leads to precious loss of hard-hiredtalent.

Who owns the induction any way? Many HR and business leaders willanswer this right even in their sleep:The immediate manager! Well, thegood news is they are right. Badnews? It stops there! More often thannot, the integration beyond the induc-tion is left to the junior most HR exec-utive or worse still to a buddy assignedto the new employee. In organizationswhere a buddy system exists, both theline manager of the new hire and theHR leave it to the ‘buddy’ to inductand integrate. It is important to realizethat the buddy’s role is critical, butdoes not substitute the role of HR orthe immediate manager.

Headwaiter Mentality! Sir, how iseverything?When you go to dine in any decentrestaurant, you are often approachedby the head waiter with a question:“Sir, how is everything?” Often theimmediate manager takes on the roleof headwaiter. Well, not quite really.The headwaiter actually is much moresincere in asking this question! Thenext level manager just goes throughthe motion to get some guilt off hischest! Recognizing the importance ofintegrating the key hires is the firstsimple step towards arresting the hem-orrhage of the talent even before theyspend 6 months into the system. Ourorganizations have systematically un-derestimated the importance of em-ployee integration and have paid ahuge price. Lessons are as obvious assun light on a bright day, but sitting inair-conditioned offices, we do notseem to understand the lessons either!

In the next couple of columns, I willcover this with more insights and ideas.

Beyond Onboarding Integrating People withthe Organization

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PEOPLE MANAGER By C. Mahalingam


LG unveils a new phone in its Optimus One series,LG LP500. Only 1000 units of this Android 2.2Froyo run phone will be sold. The phone which ispowered by a 600MHz processor features a 3.15megapixel camera, a 3.2-inch capacitive touchscreendisplay with 320×480 resolution, and an internalmemory of 170 MB. For connectivity it has GPRS,EDGE, Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g and Bluetooth v2.1. TheLP500 also has got a shiny gold World Cup logo onit back.

TECH PRODUCTSCompiled by Hari Anil

HTC unveiled its new phone, Desire Z, in India. This 3G touch phonealso has a slide out QWERTY keyboard. The 3.7 inch screen gives a480X800 WVGA resolution. This Android 2.2 (Froyo) based mobile,comes with HTC Sense and is powered by an 800 MHz CPU. It has a512MB RAM and a 1.5GB internal storage which can further be ex-panded up to 32GB using microSD memory card. Desire Z features a 5megapixel camera with autofocus and flash. Apart from 3G, connectiv-ity options include GPRS, Wi-Fi, EDGE, Bluetooth 2.0, and a micro USBport. Its 1300 mAh battery gives a talk time of up to 400 minutes onWCDMA and 590 minute on GSM, and a 430 hours of standby time.

Logitech brought its cooling pad N120 toIndia. The cooling pad has a USB poweredfan for improved airflow around the laptopand it features rear air intake. At 27 db thecooling pad’s fan is virtually silent. Its max-imum power consumption is 5V at 200mA.The pad can be used with laptops of up to 39centimeter display. The pad comes with a 3-year manufacturer’s guarantee.

Motorola’s tablet Xoom, which is also an inaugural Honey-comb tablet of Google, will hit Indian market by May 10th. The10.1 inch tablet that runs on Android Honeycomb platform ispowered by a dual-core 1GHz Nvidia Tegra SoC processor. Itfeatures 1GB DDR2 RAM and up to 32GB internal memory.The 3G tablet has a 2 megapixel front facing camera for videoconferencing and a 5 megapixel rear side camera which is ca-pable of 720p HD video recording, duel LED flash, and auto-focus. Xoom also features proximity, ambient light, barometer,gyroscope sensors. Its 24.5 W-hr battery provides up to ninehours of browsing time on 3G, up to 10 hours on wifi, up to 10hours video playback time, and 14 days of standby time.

Cyber Snipa comes to market with its new high endheadset series, the SONAR 5.1 Championship gamingheadset. The headset features 8 individual speakers, 4 ineach ear cup including a subwoofer and an in-line con-troller that allows independent control of each channel.Its headband construction with mesh padding allowsimproved airflow. Cyber Snipa’s 3D positional audiosoftware provides gamers with better sound effects. Ithas an in-line media controller which is located on itsthree meter long USB.

AMD launched the new Radeon HD 6990 graphic cards. Itdelivers a single graphics card score of P11865 in the in-dustry standard 3DMark11 benchmark. Radeon HD 6990graphics cards include AMD’s second-generation, MicrosoftDirectX 11-capable architecture, advanced image qualityfeatures, and AMD PowerTune intelligent technology to en-able higher clock speeds and faster gaming. It also featuresa Unified Video Decoder 3 (UVD3), a dedicated video play-back accelerator that provides better HD video, online videoand Blu-ray 3D quality.

DESIRE Z, NEW 3G SMART PHONE FROM HTCPrice: ` 25,590

LOGITECH’S COOLING PADN120 NOW IN INDIAN MARKET

SONAR 5.1 CHAMPIONSHIP GAMING HEADSET FROM CYBER SNIPA

Price: ` 1,195

LIMITED EDITION LG LP500 OPTIMUS ONE MOBILE PHONEPrice: ` 12,990

AMD IN MARKET WITH RADEONHD 6990 GRAPHICS CARDPrice: ` 44,990

Price: ` 3,615

MOTOROLA XOOM, ALL SET FOR INDIAPrice: ` 35,000


SiliconIndia organized the‘WebApps 2011’- theWeb Application Confer-ence in Pune on Feb 26th.The conference brought

together web developers, web de-signers, technology enthusiasts, in-novators, vendors, and users.

The event kick started with theinaugural keynote on ‘ContinuousDelivery’ by Ajey Gore, Head ofTechnology from Thoughtworks.Then moved on to more open source

web application frameworks like‘Ruby on Rails’, where GautamRege, Co-founder and Director, JoshSoftware spoke on how ‘Ruby onRails’ has emerged as a the gamechanger for web application devel-opment. He said, “Ruby on Rails isan open source Ruby web frame-work that makes it easy to build webapplications, deploy them and scalethem. A lot of large web applicationsare built using plain machines thatinter-operate via open-source li-braries. Ruby has plenty of gems

(the open source libraries) and a vi-brant community and it is no wonderthat it is being adopted rapidly bymost web professionals.”

The sessions later covered thewhole spectrum, right from develop-ment and deployment practices toscalability and performance tips totrends to bank on for wannabe entre-preneurs. A session om ‘SOA &Cloud - their Synergy’ was ad-dressed by Shriranga S Mulay, V PEngineering from Net Magic Solu-

tions, who spoke about how cloudscalability helps build scalable SOAinfrastructure are like a match madein heaven. He also talked about thesynergy between SOA and Cloudand how they complete each other,defining SOA conventionally and themyths associated with it.

IBM’s unique capability tobuild solutions across a broad arrayof software capabilities and indus-tries, was exemplified through theirsession on "Performance engineer-ing methodologies for WebApps"

which was delivered by High Per-formance On Demand ( HIPOD)specialist Bharathraj B Keshava-murthy, Enterprise Solutions Per-formance Analyst, IBM IndiaSoftware Labs. He said, ‘Perfor-mance engineering is the process bywhich software is tested and tunedwith the intent of realizing the re-quired performance. This processaims to optimize the most importantapplication performance trait, userexperience”.

The open atmosphere of theconference helped technology pro-fessionals and community membersform an interesting dialogueamongst the web development com-munity, showcasing some key webtechnologies. The event helped infostering communication among thetechnical communities and alsohelped promote the understandingof new technologies. The event wassponsored by Big Rock, Technopoint Multimedia and Josh Software.

UnderstandingWeb Apps at SiliconindiaWeb Apps Conference 2011


RNI REG.NO. KARENG/2006/16955Regn. No. KRNA/BGE-1046/08-10

Smarttechie April 11 Issue-1

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