IT industry employs more than 500,000 people in Karnataka

November 9, 2008 by ssemergic

As part of the annual awards for various categories given away during IT.com (now IT.biz) every year by STPI (Software Tech Parks of India) on November 4, 2008, there was an interesting number that was talked about. It is the total number of IT professionals in Karnataka that stands at more than 500,000 today.

As an IT professional I feel proud that this nascent industry could generate so many jobs. Though small in absolute numbers for a country of 1.1 billion people it compares roughly with the number of people employed the Government of Karnataka (GoK). It become all the more interesting when one takes note of the fact that most IT forms do not employ low end labor (Janitors, peons, drivers, security staff and helpers, as these jobs are mostly outsourced) unlike the Government whose bulk of the employees constitute Class III and Class IV.

 

Also the jobs are jobs for life and globally respected; many of the professionals can be gainfully employed anywhere in the world. With proper self-learning & training most of the professionals can look to life-long employment

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My views on Indian education

November 7, 2008 by ssemergic

IIIT-B happened due to a sincere public private partnership. Government investing in permanent assets gives the much needed stability to the staff and credibility in the eyes of applicants. Being a Government Society ensures that the assets accumulated over time will NOT benefit any private interest and thereby retaining the “public good” spirit of an academic institution.

We in India need to work together to create world-class AND world-scale Universities. Places where large number of students (that can justify critical mass of researchers in multiple areas) can pursue areas of their interest with unfettered freedom.

The regulators must move to output control in place of input control. Let institutions adopt their own means, small campus, big campus, multiple campus, multiple departments etc. Let there be a “community of scholars” to oversee quality. Let the State fund the institutions based on their quantity and quality of output measured through simple measures that can be transparently evaluated.

Let the priority of investment be people; unfortunately the way regulators specify the minimum requirements for accreditation, institutions end up having first rate buildings and second rate equipment with practically no money for investing in people. Let the right priorities be kept.

Whatever success IIIT-B has achieved in the past 9 years is due to the simple principle outlined earlier.

(Acceptance speech given during the conferment of “Champion of humanity” Award by Hindustan Chamber of Commerce in Chennai on November 6, 2008)

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Purdue President in India

November 5, 2008 by ssemergic

Dr France Cordova, an accomplished Astrophysics Professor (Stanford and CalTech educated, and earlier served in UC Riverside and UC Santa Barbara as well as NASA)) and President of the renowned Purdue University (one of the largest Engineering Schools in USA) is in India for 10 days.

As an Alumnus I had the privilege of meeting her and talking to her today. Dressed in an Indian dress, it took a second for me to recognize her (We all had seen her picture on the Web page).

She was articulate and graceful. We were particularly happy as Americans were celebrating their election result and Senator Obama taking a historic win.

For a State University in the conservative mid-west State of Indiana that too set in a rural setting (the City of West Lafayette has just a population of 50,000!), it is indeed heartening that Purdue University chose a woman as President of the University.

I do hope the able leader will take the University to greater heights.

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Obama makes history

November 5, 2008 by ssemergic

Senator Barack Hussein Obama is elected to the most powerful position of the President of the United States of America. It is a historic moment not just for USA, but the world as a whole. He is the first Black American President 

 

He is just 47 years young, educated at Columbia and Harvard Law College, is sincere, speaks straight from the heart, has compassion and wants to change the world for a better place to live. Soon after getting elected he told the American people just one line “It is YOUR victory”. He called his opponent and expressed a feeling that he wants to work with him. Senator McCain too was so graceful. I vividly remember the way Hillary Clinton gracefully bowed out of her Presidential race (I even wrote a blog entry)

One wishes that India too gets a young President, who is sincere, articulate, has humble beginnings and graceful

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2008 Nobel prizes announced

October 16, 2008 by ssemergic

Nobel prizes were announced in October 2008 (the last one on October 13th). The winners are

Physiology or Medicine -

shared by German researcher Harald zur Hausen and two French researchers Françoise  Barré-Sinoussi and Luc Montagnier

Physics -

shared by American Professor Yoichiro Nambu (University of Chicago)and Japanese researchers Makoto Kobayashi and Toshihide Maskawa (Kyoto University)

Chemistry -

American professors Osamu Shimomura (Boston University), Martin Chalfie (Columbia University) and Roger Y. Tsien (UC San Diego)

Economics

American Professor Paul Krugman (Princeton University)

Literature -

French author Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clézio

Peace

Former President of Finalnd Martti Ahtisaari

America and Europe continue to dominate, though Asian presence is slowly being felt; one hopes one day it will reach the Indian shores too

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SaaS waiting to happen (IET Int’l SaaS Conference in Bangalore Oct 14-15, 20008

October 16, 2008 by ssemergic

SaaS has been around for long though in different forms.

SABRE airline reservation system that I used in my first international flight (Madras London Chicago) as early as early 70’s
SWIFT inter-bank electronic payment systems

actually delivered software solution as a dedicated service to select “agents”.

HotMail (the first web-based mail) and several web-based mail service including GMail, Yahoo Mail, Rediff or FastMail were the next instances of software delivered as service
SalesForce.com was the “iconic” SaaS offering in the past 10 years
iTunes & iPhone too made SaaS “notion” familiar to the end users
not all such “software delivery” was “architected” as SaaS applications.

SoA (Service oriented architecture) has been maturing over the years and many successful applications are getting re-architected for SaaS.

There is a “philosophy” of SaaS, there is a “business model of SaaS” (pay as you use) and the “technology” of SaaS; what this conference does is to take a balanced view of all the three aspects.

Iconic Indian companies
TCS, Ramco, Persistent, ABS, Mastek, Mindtree, Sarena and IBS

as well as MNC’s
SAP, Microsoft and Jamcracker including SalesForce.com

are presenting their work in this conference; some of them have stalls too. They represent software vendors, ISV’s (Independent Software Vendors), System Integrators (SI) and technology vendors. Of course the focus goes beyond technology to security issues as well.

With Dr FC Kohli, Former Chairman of India’s largest & oldest software services company TCS and the Mr PRV Raja, Founder & CEO of Ramco Systems - India’s best known software product company that is now re-engineering their product into SaaS offering - giving Keynote addresses, the Conference brings some of the best minds together. We should than IET team that has come all the way from London to organize this Conference in Bangalore.

(Introductory remarks as the Event General Chair for the IET International Conference on SaaS held at Grand Ashok Hotel, Bangalore during Oct 14-15, 2008)

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Infosys has 100,000+ employees today!

October 11, 2008 by ssemergic

Along with quarterly results, Infosys also cut a huge cake marking the crossing of 100,000 employees strength on October 10, 2008!

It is a proud moment for Infosys; proud day for Indians at large

It is indeed creditable that six people with imagination, commitment and courage (and with just Rs 20,000 cash) could create an organization in India that could scale to 100,000 employees in just 27 years!

One hopes that Infosys will grow 200,000 srong in the next 5-10 years

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West Bengal’s loss is Gujarat’s win - Nano moves to Gujarat; a proud day for India

October 8, 2008 by ssemergic

Chief Minister Narendra Modi who has been battered by the media for all these years has done proud to Gujratis by swiftly swinging into action. Ratan Tata formally announced his decision to  move Nano to Gujarat; after the unfortunate incident of self-serving politicians forcing Tata’s dream car (Nano) project to move out of West Bengal.

According to Rata Tata Gujarat government moved real fast to have things ready for Tats to locate their factory into the outskirts of Ahmedabad.

It is re-assuring that there are still some Statesmen left in the country. There are Chief Ministers who care for their State! Let their tribe multiply. Finally, it is a proud day for India (following a sad Friday last week)

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One more learning opportunity - Microsoft Tech Vista @ Chennai on Oct 1, 2008

October 3, 2008 by ssemergic

Microsoft Research India organized its third edition of Tech Vista -

  • day full of outstanding talks from world’s leading computer scientists
  • upcoming & promising researchers in India (mostly PhD students) showing off their work thru “poster presentations” and 
  • a very large number of students & faculty from dozens of Institutions (both Tier I and Tier II/III) 

all assembled in Trade Center, Chennai.

The day-long festival had John Hopcroft of Cornell (NP-completeness fame), Shafi Goldwasser of MIT / Weizmann, Shree Nayar of Columbia, Rich Rashid & Rich Szeliski of Microsoft Research and our own Vijay Chandru of Strand Genomics giving in-depth talks on cutting edge technologies.

In all, it was a great event to quench one’s intellectual thirst.

Though I missed this event, select IIIT-B students had benefited fully; I could get some “gyan” today (Oct 3) during the day-long presentation to TAB (Technical Advisory Board) of which I am a Member. It was a great feeling to see the Bangalore Center managing to get so much intellectual output, thanks to Anandan & Kentaro who have built an outstanding team of 27 PhD qualified researchers in just 4 years!

  • Technology for Emerging Markets
  • Mobility
  • Algorithms
  • Rigorous software engineering
  • Cryptography and
  • Multi-lingual systems

are the key areas in whivh the researchers presented some exciting work.

All in all, MSR India is genuinely contributing to the research ecosystems in India

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A sad day for India - Nano project moves out of Singur in West Bengal

October 3, 2008 by ssemergic

With Tatas saying “tata” (good bye) to Singur, it is not just West Bengal that lost; all right thinking Indians lost to self-serving politicians for whom rhetoric and posturing are important, than service  the people.

It is a sad day because of good political leaders (there are still some left) decided to keep silent; the only hope of West Bengal (Chief Minister & Governor) were ignored. Law of the land was not allowed to have its course. The media did not add to their glory as well (by portraying the right “vibes” they could have got the right-thinking people to fight an unjust movement led by self-serving leaders)

Communists, by killing systematically any forum for dissent (by use of force) had silenced the “true voice” over the four decades.

One only hopes that some one will speak for the real farmers (several thousands of them) who would have benefited through education, healthcare, jobs and prosperity that the Nano project would have provided and what communists have systematically denied to the rural farmers in West Bengal for decades.

Bengal could have re-gained its lost glory by hosting Nano - a project, not just a pride for India, but a path-breaking move for the not-so-rich people of the world. Alas a golden opportunity is lost!

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