Professor Sadagopan’s Weblog

In an interesting announcement on May 9, 2008, SAP announced that it will make some of the business software accessible through BlackBerry smart phones; to start with it will be be CRM (Customer Relationship Management). With e-mail and address book already integrated neatly in the BlackBerry handset, pushing CRM data into BlackBerry handset makes immense sense.

Email became a powerful tool for the business users by mid 90’s. With mobility becoming important for business users and mobile phone penetrating nearly 100% of all business executives, Black Berry in the past five years has become part of business executives ‘must have’ gadget. The device delivers Email function exceptionally well; competition from mobile handset manufacturers has made sure that ‘CrackBerry” (most business users refer to BlackBerry that way) phone evolve considerably in the past 3 years. With “push mail’ support from Microsoft Mobile and other competitors, Black Berry is slowly losing its unique competitive edge. With integration of SAP, Black Berry will re-gain its competitive edge.

Thanks to BlackBerry’’s encryption scheme, business users feel ‘secure”; the occasional “blackout” that BlackBerry suffered twice in the past 4 years must be addressed to make business users feel “dependable”. I am sure BlackBerry is addressing this issue.

Though announced in 2004, SAP BlackBerry partnership did not yield any tangible results earlier. One hopes the recent announcement will not remain ‘demo ware”.

International users will get to see the “real position” in SAPPAIRE (SAP Products Show) in Orlando, Florida in late May. Indian users will get to see it in SAP Tech in the first week of June in Mumbai (hopefully).

IAOP (International Association of Outsourcing Professionals) released the list of Top 100 outsourcing companies (globally) for the year 2008 in the first week of May.

Interestingly, Infosys reached the 3^rd position, with TCS and Wipro in the 6^th and 7^th position; the relatively new entrant Tech Mahindra reaching the 10^th position, Indian companies occupy 4 of the top 10 positions, something that makes every Indian proud.

The citation talks of

“executive leadership’ for Infosys

“Employee management” for TCS and Wipro

“Outsourcing experience” for Tech Mahindra, while it talks of

“Customer testimonials’ for Accenture, the No 1 in the list, and,

“Size and growth’ for IBM, the No 2 in the list

It may not be out of place to mention that Mr. Azim Premji has been talking of Wipro in the “Top 10 Global outsourcing List” by 2010 as his goal; he has realized it 2 years ahead of schedule!

Other Indian Companies in the Top 100 include

HCL Technologies at No 11

Mastek at No 11

WNS Global at 19

Hexaware at 22

Cognizant at 27

24/7 Customer at 28

ITC InfoTech at 40

KPIT Cummins at 42

Patni at 46

Zensar at 53

MindTree at 54, and,

MPhasis at 56

May 10, 2008
Today I went to the polling booth near my house. With so much pessimism around, I went with minimal expectation. I may NOT be able to vote; my name may NOT be there; some one would have voted for me (none of them are uncommon in India with 1.2 billion people with 800 million eligible voters)

To my surprise, I found an agent giving me and my wife a “slip” (a small piece of paper) with Roll No 1441 & 1442 and Polling Station number 53. I did find one room wit the caption “53″; stood in the Q for 20 minutes; I was asked to go to the next room 52A (that was empty). There were 4 officials; one had a list with an entry that tallied with my name; he read it out; the next official asked me to sign; verified my signature with the signature on the Voter ID card; he gave me a sheet that I handed over to the next official; he applied the indelible mark on my left fore-finger and led me to the 4th official; she “unlocked” the polling station; I moved up to the station that was “covered” for privacy; I pressed the button corresponding to my choice (the name and party symbol was clearly visible); the 4th official heard a “beep” sound on her station and told me “over”. I had cast my vote! It took a comfortable 25 minutes but the process was fairly pleasant

Being on the Board of BEL (Bharat Electronics Ltd) that manufactures, supplies, maintains and operates EVMs (about 650,000 of them in use all over India) I felt very happy that India is using “electronic” voting very well in spite of million constraints on infrastructure front

Bangalore has voted; hopefully for a Government that cares for people, delivers results and goes beyond “fighting amongst themselves”

It was an interesting day at NIMHANS Convention Center watching the teams giving presentations on their work. The subject was “sustainability”; of course, most of the teams had used “computing” as a tool (probably influenced by the sponsor being Microsoft).

Three teams wee selected from India; after training at IIMA for a while one team is to be selected to represent India in Imagine Cup 2008 Final in France.

Novices@Work that uses Sensor Network to monitor agriculture from Vivekananda Educational Society, Mumbai won the First Prize RS 40K)
SKAN that deals with power management tools to switch off PCs across corporate network from Bharti Vidyapeeth, Mumbai won the Second Prize Rs 20K)
Green Waves from Delhi University Computer Science won the Third Prize Rs 10K)

Microsoft Chairman Ravi Venkatesan gave away the prizes.

Lead India winner RK Mishra gave an inspiring speech; his key message “solving India’s problem using whatever tools is cool; Internet alone is not cool, though most students are from IT”

Kiran Karnik former NASSCOM President in his keynote address talked of the “envious” opportunities enjoyed by Indian students today; he talked of three differences in the environment (compared to his days) that makes Innovation accelerate in India today;

ability to innovate without the need for expensive equipment (thanks to widely available computers);
power of software to abstract complex problems;
power of Internet that allows any one to fine collaborators everywhere

There was an interesting panel discussion moderated by Rajdeep of NASSCOM with IIMA Director Barua, myself, Gopi from GE and Paul from Microsoft.

All in all it was a nice learning experience

The 2008 Padma Award (Civilian Awards in India) had Mr N R Narayana Murthy (Chairman & Founder, Infosys) and Mr. Shiv Nadar (Chairman & Founder, HCL); it is heartening to note that IT industry continues to contribute to the country, and in turn the country recognizes such contributions.

Interestingly, Wikipedia site had all the information (in fact better classified than Government of India site) almost within 24 hours - the power of co-operation and the spirit of volunteerism.

Ashok Leyland, the Chennai-based $ 2 billion commercial vehicles major launched iBus (Intelligent Bus) in AutoExpo 2008. Designed by a team of “young turks”, it is an innovative bus that plans to provide

• convenience,
• comfort, and
• connectivity 

for the Internet generation. The costs are Indian, but the features are international; a bold attempt from the company that is considered “laid back” and making products with “pedastrian features”. It will be interesting to see such bases changing the face of Indian public transportation.

As the industries evolve, the emphasis shifts from “carrier” to “content” and then to “control”. For example, in the early days of railroads, those who made the “rails” were the kings; after 3, 4 decades no one talked about the “rail road builders” (carrier); emphasis shifted to trains and logistics (content); later, to the “gauges”, “standards” and “signaling” (control). The same extends to airlines, roads and even to newspapers. Vendors controlling paper production and printing machinery (carrier) gave way to newspapers (content), and finally to editors (control). It is not that carrier and content will go away; it is just the shift of the emphasis. IT industry is going to be the same; computers (carriers) will give way to content; Google and Yahoo represent the shift already. But the real power will be with standards (control); with Indian IT industry slowly taking a leadership role globally, they should start putting emphasis on “control”, which in IT would be very much related to standards. Somehow standards are NOT the “in thing” among the professionals in the Indian IT industry. Even our students do not think much about the standards; I tell them that they cannot IM (Instant Message) so easily to their friends (on different networks and using a variety of handsets), but for standardization; SMS is no different. Amongst colleagues, while being on the Conference Committee of a prestigious conference is something they value, the same cannot be said of membership of some technical committees of standards making bodies. May be, we should make such memberships of significant value. ISO and the Indian arm BSI should look into this aspect. The first ever visit of the Secretary General of ISO to Bangalore should be a landmark event in the history of standards and their renewed importance amongst IT industry professionals in India (Remarks given during the Reception to ISO (International Standards Organization) Secretary General Alan Bryden in Bangalore on December 7, 2007)

I just have three points to make

• Contrary to what the popular press writes, India does a lot of manufacturing. Just look around – we produce 1.2 million cars, 0.2 million trucks, 6 million 2-wheelers (Motor bikes and scooters). We are the largest producers of clocks and watches in the world. We grow flowers right in this town and export into Dutch market. We produce enough clothes to robe the Billion+ people, food to feed them, drugs to cure them. Even school bags are produced in several hundreds of million per year (thanks to our large population)
• The second one is a strong statement “manufacturing is IT”. Look at the stages of manufacturing – design, production, logistics and support. Each one of these stages is impacted by IT; design has practically become “digital”. With increase in automation and robotics, production will see larger role for IT. Logistics (tracking, routing) is very dependent on IT. More and more items (starting with computers and instruments) will be “remotely supported”, thanks to IT
• Finally software will get embedded (I am not talking of embedded software only). Look at Siemens acquisition of UGS; today it is called Siemens PLM solutions. More software will be written; but the companies writing them may “get tucked in” to manufacturing companies rather than staying alone.

(Keynote address given in 4th ARC India Forum event “Winning strategies for global manufacturing” at Bangalore on November 29, 2007)

Microsoft Zune 2 is getting traction.

The Christmas seasonal sales peak had Zune 2 off the shelves (very different compared to Zune launch last year when they were not moving out of the shelves!)

The display is brilliant, Wi-Fi makes browsing a great experience, particularly on the larger & brighter screen.

It looks like Apple iPod is getting a competitor finally; and, that is good for the end consumer

Microsoft has a history of coming from behind and getting to a leadership position. While it may not happen for iPod, at least they will bring out another competitor of large scale to Apple

Tata Consultancy Services bagged a large outsorcing contract for IT & Operations worth $1.2 billion from the Nielsen Company, the world’s leading provider of consumer and media information services. This is a 10-year agreement.

This is a first $ 1+ billion contract for an Indian IT services major; naturally it is an exciting moment and a turning point for the maturing Indian software services industry. The order coming from a Dutch major with global footprint, that too in the information services industry, is a shot in the arm for TCS and the Indian IT services industry.

In the past, doubts were expressed about the growth of Indian IT services industry beyond their billion dollar mark; analysts wrote that large outsourcing contracts ($ 1 billion and above) would only go to IBM, Accenture, EDS, CapGemini and CSC; luckily, Indian IT services companie are able to break into that “elite league” showing signs of further groth.

I for one look to TCS, Infosys & Wipro (may be CTS, Satyam and HCL) crossing the $ 10 billion mark by 2010. Then, and only then, I would say that the Indian IT services industry has “arrived”; I am sure they will.

(Source: TCS Web-site Press Release of Oct 18, 2007)