Silicon India

BUSINESS & TECHNOLOGY IN THE U.S. & INDIA JUNE - 2010 SILICONINDIA.COM

PUBLISHED SINCE 1997sil iconindia

Deepak Khare

In My Opinion: Pradeep Elankumaran, Intridea VC TALK: Mohanjit Jolly, DFJ India

s i l i con ind ia |5|J u n e 2 0 1 0

PublisherHarvi Sachar

Editor-in-ChiefPradeep Shankar

Managing EditorChristo Jacob

Deputy EditorsJayakishore Bayadi Jaya Smitha Menon

Editorial Staff

BennyThomas Eureka BharaliRoshna Sankar Sikta Samantaray

Vimali Swamy

Sr.Visualizer Raghu KoppalSubscription Manager P Magendran

MMaaiilliinngg AAddddrreessss

SiliconIndia Inc44790 S. Grimmer Blvd

Suite 202, Fremont, CA 94538

T:510.440.8249, F:510.440.8276

siliconindiaJune 2010, volume 13-06 (ISSN 1091-9503) Published monthly by siliconindia, Inc.

siliconindia’s circulation is audited and certifiedby BPA International. siliconindia is available throughmainstream retail outlets such as Barnes & Noble, Borders, andTower Records. It is also available at ethnic Asian Indian stores inmajor Indian hot spots across the U.S. The magazine is also dis-

tributed at major trade shows and conferences, including Comdex, InternetWorld and PC Expo.

Copyright © 2009 siliconindia, Inc. All rights reserved. Reproductionin whole or part of any text, photography or illustrations without writ-ten permission from the publisher is prohibited. The publisher assumesno responsibility for unsolicited manuscripts, photographs or illustra-tions. Views and opinions expressed in this publication are not neces-sarily those of the magazine and accordingly, no liability is assumed bythe publisher thereof.

siliconindia

To subscribe to siliconindiaVisit www.siliconindia.com or send email to

[email protected]

JUNE - 2010

Editorial

[Business]Telecom Companies ReviveValue of the Indian Paisa By Sanjit Chatterjee, REVE Systems

[Business]HR Meets Technology Askingthe Right QuestionsBy Sanjay Sathe, RiseSmart

[Technology]Preventive HealthcareThrough Social NetworkingBySubhash K Parameswaran,UST Global

Information BreachtheThreat is InternalBy Rajesh Parthasarathy, MENTIS Software

[Management]Fostering Productivity and Organizational EffectivenessVia Employee EngagementBy Nanda Ramanujam, Axentis Software

[Business]Entrepreneurship RewardsBy R.Subramanya, Educampus

[Technology]The Emergence of Eco-Friendly Computing Reduce Reuse RecycleBy Shiv Kumar, Zylog Systems

How to Use Technology toRedefine Today’s EconomyBy Daniel Burrus

[CIO Profile]Social Media ConvergenceKey Enabler of CustomerOriented Service in FutureBy Vimali Swamy

[SI Blog]India to INDIA The Pokhran Way By Manan Bhatt, Geodesic Information Systems

[SI 20 Profile]

[In My Opinion]Technological Prescience & Building Great Indian Products By Pradeep Elankumaran, Intridea

[Infocus]

[VC Chakra]Infineta Systems Closes $15 million Series A FundingAxtria Closes $2.5 million Se-ries A Funding

[CEO Spotlight]Enterprise Social Software ATrend that Needs to be Tapped onEnterprise Mobile Applications WillDrive the Next Mobile Wave

[VC Talk]Startup Ideas the DFJ WouldLike to FundBy Mohanjit Jolly, DFJ India

[Technology]Facing Upto the Green ChallengeBy Vikas Bansal, Carrier Sales

06

08

13

14

22

24

34

36

38

40

42

44

46

26

28

30

32

Contents June2010

16 Cover Story CaresoftPlayingtoWin

By Christo Jacob

In one of the popular temples in the U.S., a quote is engraved ona pillar, “There are some things which Google cannot answeryou. So believe in God.” This reflects how profoundly Google

has revolutionized the very face of the Internet since the 1990s. Asimilar revolution is expected to happen with the recent 3G auctionin India that earned close to $15 billion to the Indian government.How? Unlike before, when the mobile was a commodity of the upperclass individual, the scenario has completely changed today. In thepast few years, the Indian and Chinese consumers have been leadingthe growth in this sector – the number of mobile users in India is ex-pected to increase from 600 million to over 1 billion by 2014. More-over, the increasing mobile broadband subscribers and data usagehas fuelled the spread of smartphone penetration from 11 percent to17 percent in 2009.

But there may be a hitch. Despite the market looking rosy for the3G spectrum auction winners, there are worries of the ‘winner’scurse’ that plagued the UK’s 3G spectrum allocation in 2000, whichraised $34 billion. During that time, the bidders ended up paying somuch for the license that they did not have funds to create the infra-structure to support the rollout of the products and services. Hope-fully there is no repeat of the disaster in the current bid in India wheretelecom players have paid 10 times the amount they paid for 2G li-censes just two years ago. Moreover, no single company has won abid in all circles.

Hence, striking a balance between making 3G affordable to pre-mium customers and upgrading their instruments, providing the data-rich 3G service through their own service providers in respectivecities will be a major challenge for these players, especially whenthe BSNL and MTNL have already set the rules of the game somemonths back. A bright spot for the telco service providers at a timelike this is the fact that the Indian mobile industry is ready with hand-sets and supporting infrastructure.

The only concern for these winners is to play the card right cou-pled with the right push to mobile app developers encouraging more3G apps to be developed and also to develop a clear understandingbetween the operator and the mobile startups so that both can flour-ish. For 3G, there is much to gain from the buzz created by online appstores of Apple, Nokia, Samsung, and Sony Ericsson, and on Face-book and Orkut as well, where developers can sell directly to con-sumers. Of course, they must pay a yearly fee and 30 percent of theirrevenues to the service platform, perhaps much lesser initially, whichmay encourage more mobile app developers.

Please do share your thoughts with us.Christo JacobManaging [email protected]

3G: Will it Revamp the Face of India?

s i l i con ind ia |7|J u n e 2 0 1 0s i l i con ind ia |6|J u n e 2 0 1 0

There was a curious moment onmy trip to India this year whenI realized that the majority ofthe country utilizes a compo-nent of the GSM cellphone

protocol from 1985 - the ability to sendshort text messages - in a manner that’scompletely different from what I was usedto in the Western world. SMS is ridicu-lously ingrained in almost every aspect ofIndian society now, starting from friendsand family using it to communicate cheaplyto event and train ticketing and even mar-keting products to a distinct clientele. Whilethis in itself is not surprising in a countrylike India with its sharply segmented mar-ket and quickly-adapting but value-con-scious consumers, what’s truly curious isthe fact that SMS has only recently seenrapid growth in the West, with the teenage

crowd enthusiastically sending messages tomatch up with the way the rest of the worldhas been using the format for years now.The kind of SMS marketing campaigns thatIndia has been running successfully foryears have only recently started to take holdin the mobile culture of the West. What’shappening here?

The ‘great indian number trick’ alwaysapplies when you’re talking about India, acountry that has a population of over a bil-lion; even a small fraction of the market isstill quite a lot of people when comparedto most other countries. At the same time,what works for the rest of the world moreoften than not fails miserably in India, asmany big multinationals have discoveredto their dismay (for instance Kelloggs’ andCoca-Cola’s marketing problems) over thelast decade. With this kind of market con-ditions, adoption of new technology istruly not a linear process, and while in ret-rospect a piece of technology may seem aperfect fit, it doesn’t appear so during itsinfancy in the Indian market. Again takingSMS as an example, missteps, suddengrowth spurts, and many failed ideas haveconverged to bring forth a standard, rec-

ognizable format that provides opportuni-ties for both personal and economicgrowth for the majority of Indian con-sumers and businesses. The companiesthat were shrewd enough to see the imme-diate advantages of the then-new format afew years back were the ones that are nowreaping big, big dividends.

Let’s take for example SMSGup-shup. They run an SMS-based socialnetworking service that (among otherfeatures) lets people subscribe to top-ics of their interest using their cell-phones; whenever new content isposted about a topic all subscribersare notified immediately on theirphone. They understand that theirsegment of the Indian market consistsof people who require informationquickly, effortlessly, at dirt cheaprates, and using technology that theyare comfortable with and understandstheir cellphones. At this point SMS-Gupshup’s network consists of 26million users, and is growing with$12 million in funding quite recently.This is pure innovation tailored to aparticular market, and hopefullyshowing other Indian startups the waythings should be done in India.

Building Products for India UsingNew TechnologySo, if you’re an Indian software orhardware entrepreneur looking tobuild products for the current and fu-ture Indian market, what should yoube concerned about? First, drop allthoughts of global expansion for themoment. Your product needs testingand growth on Indian soil before it willever be ready for a global launch. Re-member, there’s always more moneyto be made at the bottom of the pyra-mid than at the top. Apart from finan-cial issues, after speaking with manyIndian Web entrepreneurs, you realizethat once your vision is in place andyour market has been defined moreoften than not your problems are re-lated to people rather than process. Atthe same time, solid technological andprocedural foundations need to be es-tablished to ensure quality and to trulycement a product into place in a mar-ket like India’s. Let’s talk about bothat this point.

Technology-wise, open source andopen standards trump all in the longrun. In a country like India, it’s almost

impossible to have useful closed sys-tems, and your software and overallarchitecture should reflect that. Opensource software lets you leverage theyears of work that quality developershave already put towards developing astable piece of software, along withthe freedom to modify whenever nec-essary to fit your product’s vision.Working with open standards ensuresseamless integration with other prod-ucts and services later on in your prod-uct’s pipeline - no developer likessoftware that doesn’t play nice.

Feature-wise, your intuition andyears of experience living in Indiashould give you an innate and pro-nounced edge when it comes to build-ing out products that your country’scitizens want. Being aware of yourown self and noticing behavior andusage patterns of various technologiesamong your friends, coworkers, andfamily will bring forth new ideas forproduct improvement. Take heed ofthese ideas and run them ruthlesslythrough the wringer for flaws and im-perfections, then shine it up, build, andrelease. Remember, the Indian marketeats up technologies that solve realproblems. For instance, just look at theIndian Railways reservations website;it may be slow at 8 AM, but that does-n’t mean that people aren’t using it,and it’s miles ahead of the system thatexisted before.

Vital to your dream of launching asuccessful product in India is yourability to cheaply and rapidly iteratethe product. If you take more than aweek to release a new version of soft-ware, you’re doing it wrong. You and

the rest of the Indian market as con-sumers expect quality as a birthright,and rightfully so. They will tell you ifyour product is no good, and you’d bewise to listen, then rinse and repeat. Ifyour shop doesn’t have the capabilityof quickly delivering the right high-quality product at the right time,you’re sunk. Use the new rapid devel-opment languages and frameworksthat are readily available, leverage thecomputing clouds to scale out to mil-lions of users, and interface with ex-isting websites to market your productcheaply - all is fair in the productsgame, especially when you’re playingfor such high stakes.

From my conversations with In-dian startup CEOs and techies in gen-eral, the main problem withentrepreneurship in India is not thelack of vision, it’s the lack of peopleto execute it. This is a topic that comesup surprisingly often, and there’s a dif-ferent approach to this that might help.Don’t hire by skill, hire by smartness.Smart people learn quick, adapt quick,and are usually passionate about work-ing on something they like. Just makesure that your product is interestingenough to hold their attention, andyou’ll be off to a great start.

The Road AheadWe’re now fast approaching a pointwhere India is catching up to techno-logical changes in the Western worlda lot quicker than before. This meansthat opportunities will arise soon forleveraging new technology in waysthat make sense for the Indian con-sumer; ways that more often than notdon’t apply in other countries. Sharp,clear-eyed entrepreneurs with visionare few and far in between, but if youknow that you’re one of them, and arewilling to put in the effort, there arenew businesses to run and platforms todevelop. Build products for the Indiathat exists now as well as the one thatwill exist a few years from now andyou’ll definitely reap the rewards. si

Technological Prescience & Building

iinn mmyyopinion

By Pradeep ElankumaranThe author Director of R&D/Architect, Intridea.He can be reached at [email protected]

GreatIndian Products

Adoption of new technology is not a linear process; and while apiece of technology may be a perfect fit, it doesn’t appear so during its infancy due to the Indian market conditions

Your product needs testingand growth on Indian soilbefore it will ever be readyfor a global launch; drop allthoughts of global expansion for the momen

Pradeep Elankumaran


in

The domestic information tech-nology (IT) firms are grapplingwith several market pressures

like wage inflation, subdued demand,rupee appreciation, and others.Amidst these strains tech vendors inIndia are in a row with their customersto dilute margin impacts from marketforces by pushing up the billing rateby 10 to 15 percent, which is not easy.

Companies like Sonata Softwareand Infosys Technologies are havinga tough time to convince customers topay higher prices besides the prevail-ing optimism among the tech vendorsand the improved guidance. “At In-fosys, we're trying (to hike prices) butit's not working. The world economy

is not like India's. Some Westerneconomies may have come out of thetrough, but still there is no growth. Weare not really in a high-demand mar-ket yet," says Subhash Dhar, Seniorvice-president and Head of the com-munications service providers (CSP)business unit.

Dhar pinpoints that uncertaintycontinues to plague the global econ-omy. Most companies in the West setaside opex and capex spends for IT,just like they do for R&D. Last year,they utilized the opex budget, butcapex was left untouched. When thiscapex is released, demand for ITservices will go up and that couldpush up prices. As per Gartner data,

financial services companies in NorthAmerica spend the most on IT withan allocation of close to 8 percent oftheir total revenue, while airlinesspend the least at 1.95 percent. Com-munication firms set aside six per-cent, construction five percent,healthcare four percent, and retail 2.5percent. Experts feel that if at all anyupswing in pricing occurs, it will nothappen any time soon. ChandramouliC S, Director-advisory services, Zin-nov Management Consulting says,“Rate revision by IT customers willnot happen before 12-18 months.”According to him, till then, cost pres-sures would be taken care by increas-ing the scale of operations. si

Despite Efforts Indian IT Firms Struggle to Hike Billing Rates

With a wave of tablet PCshitting the consumer mar-ket, there has been a lot of

discussions on whether these devicescan emerge as an alternative to text-books for the student community.Though, many agree that these de-vices can one day replace the goodold textbooks in developed countries,can this be the same scenario in acountry like India also?

The tech majors seem to be very con-fident about the opportunities of thetablets, especially in the education sec-tor. After Apple unveiled its tablet PC, theiPad, several tech majors have startedshowing off their own 'iPad killers'. Join-ing this long list of contenders waiting torule the tablet world is an India basedfirm Notion Ink, which unveiled its'Adam' tablet in January this year at CES.And the person who co-founded this

firm, Rohit Rathi believes that in the next2-3 years tablets can replace textbooks inIndia at least in higher education. How-ever, Rathi feels that there is a major rolethat the government should also play inorder to increase the penetration of thesedevices. "The two main challenges inIndia are connectivity and availability ofdevices," says Rathi.

Today, several institutes in the UShave already started using tablets insteadof textbooks by collaborating with techfirms. However, there are still some is-sues that the education community inIndia is concerned about. "The devicesshould come with certain features thateven engineering students can use, thattoo at an affordable cost, not many suchtablets are available as of now," pointsout B. N. Jain, Professor of ComputerScience at Indian Institute of Technology,Delhi. As far as pricing is concerned

Rathi explains that the average price ofthe tablet will be around Rs. 15,000,which would be affordable for studentsdoing their higher studies.

With both the academia and thetech community ready to upgrade tothe tablet generation, a thrust fromthe government can further increasethe use of these devices in a countrylike India that can revolutionize theeducation system.

When Nitin Nohria, an alum-nus of Indian Institute ofTechnology, joined Harvard

as a faculty in 1988, none would havethought that a history is in the making.Today, after 22 years, he stands to bethe first Indian-American Dean of theprestigious Harvard Business School.The 48-year-old leadership professorwill serve as the 10th dean of HarvardBusiness School from July 1, succeed-ing the current dean Jay Light.

Though, he was one of the highprofile professors at Harvard, Prof.Nohria was not necessarily the mostobvious choice for the job. Many in-siders predicted that senior associatedean Srikant Datar or Carl Kester,Deputy Dean for Academic Affairs,would be appointed. However, his ex-perience within India and his stints at

London Busi-ness Schoolmade Nohriathe rightchoice tobring in aglobal per-spective tothe dean's po-sition.

Nohria received his degree inchemical engineering in 1984 from theIndian Institute of Technology, Mum-bai, which also eventually awardedhim with its distinguished alumnusmedal in 2007. He then received hisdoctoral degree in management fromthe Massachusetts Institute of Tech-nology's Sloan School of Managementin 1988 where he earned an outstand-ing doctoral thesis award in behavioral

and policy sciences. Following that, hejoined the Harvard faculty as an assis-tant professor in 1988, became an as-sociate professor five years later, andthen served as the Richard P. ChapmanProfessor of Business Administrationsince 1999.

His current academic interests in-clude the theory and practice of leader-ship, the study of human motivation,the analysis of management practicescritical to corporate success, and thestrategic and organizational challengesof globalization. The latest of his six-teen books, - Handbook of LeadershipTheory and Practice - has been co-edited by his Harvard colleague RakeshKhurana and reflects a colloquium heorganized as part of Harvard's centen-nial in 2008 to stimulate serious schol-arly research on leadership. si

in

Are you Ready to Give UpTextbooks for a Tablet PC?

Harvard Gets its First Indian-American Dean

Nitin Nohria

By Benny Thomas


Blurred pictures are often aworry, especially when thephotos hold special memo-

ries. But worry no more; Neel Joshi,a computer vision engineer at theUniversity of California, San Diegoand his colleagues have developed asoftware that can transform blurryphotographs into clear pictures thatare worth keeping.

Joshi realized that precious mo-ments are often lost due to blur in-

duced by camera shake and poor light-ing when he and his colleagues stud-ied home photo collections and sawthat the faces in many pictures wereblurry. Unlike Photoshop, the softwaredeveloped by Joshi does not remodelones physical features in a picture. Butit can fix problems with the photo -blurriness or shade - by sharpening upfacial features according to the stockimage of a particular face.

The software developed by the

team uses an algorithm that uses facialrecognition methods like those insome photo editors to find a sharpimage with a similar pose. The patternof color and light in the blurry face isthen tweaked to match the modelphoto. The software can also add colorand shine to black and white pictures.

The software is yet to be availablecommercially. But when it does, nomore losing out on special momentsof life.

Of late, the Indian IT industryhas been on a tremendoushiring spree but a majority of

them are expatriates. With a growinggap in skills in local talent, it is nat-ural that the industry scouts for tal-ent abroad.

The Bombay Stock Exchange(BSE) had hired Madhu Kannan asthe CEO in May last year. The over-seas based Kannan was the Manag-ing Director in the corporate strategygroup at Bank of America-MerillLynch. Infosys Technologies hasaround 100 expats in the middle andsenior management levels working inIndia. In July last year, Wipro hired

Martha Bejar to head its global salesand operations.

"Some are hired to fill skill gaps.There is also a lot many who want towork for a world class company thathas its base in India. They want tohave an India experience in their CV,"says T.V. Mohandas Pai, Director andHead of Human Resources and Train-ing at Infosys.

Sanat Kawatkar from TowersWatson has estimated that 25 percentof actuaries in India are from over-seas who are paid competent salaries,when compared to the developedmarkets. "Insurance firms typicallyhire expats to fill management posi-

tions in finance and actuarial serv-ices, in which the local talent pool islimited," he says.

"Expats offer Indian companies the'know-how, the know-who, and theknow-what' that they would find diffi-cult, if not impossible, to replicate ef-fectively," says Dipak C. Jain, DeanEmeritus at the Kellogg School ofManagement.

Just as the US workforce is'browning' with the addition of foreigntalent, so too we see the trend thatIndia is slowly 'creaming' as foreign-ers increasingly seek opportunities inthe world's largest democracy," hesays in the Amrop study. si

Ever imagined, why do we con-vict criminals and offenders?The sole reason is to rehabili-

tate their mindset and make them re-alize their mistakes to help themtransform to become better humanbeings. But do the prisons in Indiahave any such facility?

According to a national financialdaily, there’s one in Hyderabad’sCherlapally Central Jail, which wouldhave a BPO unit in its premises. It isa public private partnership where theglobal IT firm Radiant Info Systemswill invest money and expertise in theunit and the establishment spacealong with the manpower would be

provided by the prison authorities.With a strength of around 70 odd

inmates in one shift, the BPO will runin three shifts. The prisoners willwork from within the 'closed space' ofthe BPO office and will be taken outof the locked enclosure at the begin-ning and end of each shift.

Jail officials say that the ‘interestlevel and aptitude’ of the inmates willbe considered before involving themin this ambitious project. Accordingto C N Gopinatha Reddy, DirectorGeneral of Prisons, Andhra Pradesh,as many as 200-250 inmates could beengaged in the BPO unit and they willbe shortlisted from inmates that are

matriculates and graduates. Officialsexplain that those shortlisted wouldfirst be trained by experts and laterabsorbed by the BPO company.

"For starters, the convicts work-ing at the BPO would not have accessto phones as is the case in a call cen-ter. They would be involved in bank-related work of data entry andtransfer," says Reddy. "The idea is toensure that on being released, theprisoners find it easy to get absorbedin the mainstream. Prisoners oftenfind getting suitable employment postrelease a tough task. So, this is an at-tempt to ensure that their employersknow them well in advance."

The world of cricket graduallycame home with the radio fol-lowed by the television. It has

now reached an entirely new level toconnect with the fans through the mo-

bile. Gone are the days and timeswhen one had to sit in front of the tel-evision to catch the live action of thesport. The new style of cricket’s for-mat laid down by the IPL has intensi-fied the interest of the audience. Anyinformation related to cricket excitesmost of the public.

According to a report, as comparedto last year the mobile platform saw a100 percent rise in the user interest forreceiving a word about cricket. Thishas also revived the interest in thesport, which was on the verge of de-cline due to excessive number ofmatches being played nowadays. Inthis fast moving world no one has thetime to sit for hours in front of the TVand watch a game. For the diehardcricket lovers all over the world, theuse of mobiles to get updates on thesport is like a boon.

"The IPL on the mobile platformhas received tremendous responsefrom mobile users across the country.The rate at which mobile phone own-

ers in India are consuming the IPL in-formation on their phone is a testi-mony to the value, simplicity, and thepremium content the service offers.Mobile has become one of the mainsources of information and entertain-ment across the country," says KedarSohoni, President, Informate MobileIntelligence.

The interest of the viewers reachedsuch a level that the sports sites hadhigher page views. The official web-site for IPL reached a distinguishedlevel followed by Cricinfo.com. Theseason 3 of IPL witnessed that in thegaming section Brian Lara cricket,Cricket T20 world Championship app,and Freddie Flintoff were the topgames. Many of the cricket games thatwere played last year found visibilityin this season too.

The use of mobile for creatingmore viewers for cricket is indeed agood idea as it helps the public to en-vision an interesting match withoutwasting much time. si

in in

Indian Developed Software Makes Blurry Pictures Clear

Now, Prisoners to Run BPOs

IPL on Mobile, a Big Success, Report

Indian IT Sector Scouts for Expatriates to Bridge Skill Gap

Jaswinder Chadda and NavdeepChadda co-founded Axtria has closedSeries A round of venture capital

funding of $2.5 million. The financing ledby Sequoia Capital India also included pri-vate investors Richard Braddock, Chair-man and CEO, Fresh Direct, AmarpreetSawhney, CEO, Octux; Fred Khosravi,MD, Incept, and Sandeep Tyagi, Chair-man and MD, Estee Advisors.

Founded in 2009, the Morristownbased Axtria provides business analyticstechnology and services to improve effec-tiveness in sales, distribution, marketing,and customer operations. “We providepredictive analytics and technology solu-tions to help customers manage their sales

and marketing operations. The demand forour solutions is driven by explosion ofdata. Every big company has invested intechnologies including business intelli-gence (BI), customer relationship man-agement (CRM), and marketingautomation systems. We provide businessanalytics solutions that help customers im-prove performance of CRM and market-ing systems,” says Jaswinder Chadda,CEO, Axtria.

Using a ‘product-enabled service’model, Axtria’s products are designedto be integrated with existing applica-tions, increasing the ROI of IT invest-ments. The company will use proceedsfrom the financing to develop sales, dis-tribution, and marketing analytics soft-ware products and to expand its currentUS-based operations into India.

Chadda sees a huge requirement forbusiness analytics solutions for salesand marketing. Analysts estimate theindustry spending in this sector any-

where between $5 billon and $10 bil-lion by 2015. The best analogs for thebusiness analytics is current spend ondata collection, data management, datawarehousing, business intelligence,CRM, and marketing automation.

A number of companies have madebusiness analytics a core growth areafor their business, notable among thembeing IBM. There are also several oth-ers who have added BI in their serviceportfolio. But Chadda is not worried.“We are unique because we combine in-dustry experience, predictive analytics,and technology to build sales and mar-keting solutions,” he says.

At present, the company is 10 mem-bers strong, of whom four are full timeemployees and the other six are con-sultants working with business part-ners. Axtria is looking to grow rapidlyin 2010 and setting up an operation inIndia by the second half of 2010 is oneof its top most priorities. si

si l i con ind ia |13|J u n e 2 0 1 0s i l i con ind ia |12|J u n e 2 0 1 0

As long as people have the need toshare their excitement with oth-ers the written form of commu-

nication is bound to exist. The saying‘think before you speak’ also supportsthe fact that formulation of words is agood way to share wisdom. The eluci-dation through written words is an eas-ier way to manifest all sorts ofinformation to others. The reversalcame both through a 50 percent jumpin text messaging and the rise of data-first smartphones like the Droid andiPhone. The design of large-screenedphones for the use of Internet alsoworks in support of texting one’s ac-quaintances.

The companies with the most mar-ket share in smartphones are those thathave the most experience producingtouchscreen or QWERTY keyboarddevices such as Apple and RIM, wherecall-focused companies like Nokia

have struggled. The process of voicebeing overtaken by data on cellphonesshows the fact that writing is still thebest form of communication for many.There are a lot of people who find it

easier to express themselves through

written words. Internet access and textmessaging occupied more data on theUS carriers' networks than did theequivalent in calls. A lot of social fac-tors also serve as subsidy to this fact asmost of the teenagers are growing upwith messaging phones. Not only dothe teenagers text their friends, eventhe adults are getting used to use thetext form to communicate.

Writing is an ace form of articulat-ing information as it allows the personproper time to think before he or sheexhibits the feelings. When we writedown the message to be conveyed, itbecomes simple for the receiver to un-derstand it.

Calls have also grown shorter andare now more likely to be used for cru-cial info rather than usual conversa-tions. A typical same-area call hasdropped to 1.8 minutes from nearly2.3 in 2008. si

in

Now, Mobile Phones are Used More for Text, Internet

Who said that, the CIOs are theones responsible for an orga-nization’s processes and prac-

tices supporting the flow ofinformation? Their role is manifold,taking cognizance of the current com-petitive business environment. In a bidto make the best of the growth oppor-tunities, the CIO’s role in organiza-tions has turned critical. As per theresearch firm Gartner, it is the trait tomanage the operations while grabbingthe opportunities with an entrepre-neurial mindset that makes the CIOsreel out better profits.

"For IT leaders, entrepreneurialgrowth and the shift from a 'prob-lem-focused' organization to onethat is 'opportunity-focused' require

more planning and execution thansimply changing the organizationchart," Gartner vice-president, JorgeLopez says.

Entrepreneurial IT organizationsmust maintain a dual focus of achiev-ing targeted growth while running thecurrent business. Building newsources of revenue and positioningthe business for dominance in thenew venture is an entrepreneurial taskand this requires an equally entrepre-neurial CIO to grab the opportunity.

According to Gartner, there aretwo key tools that the CIO must em-ploy to satisfy the ambitions for en-trepreneurial growth; frameworksthat set the agenda and actions forchange. The entrepreneurial scope

assessment framework enables CIOsand other business executives toevaluate the magnitude of the oppor-tunity and understand the scope ofthe task facing IT, as well as otherbusiness units.

However, the analysts also pointout the intricacies involved in don-ning this entrepreneurial role. "Thegreatest conflict faced by entrepre-neurial CIOs will be the tension be-tween the team that is focused on theentrepreneurial opportunities and theteam that is focused on 'keeping thelights on’. Both must function effec-tively in an environment of elevatedrisk. Failing on either responsibilityis unacceptable and highly dangerousfor the business," Lopez says.

CIOs are now Expected to be Master of All Trades

Infineta Systems, co-founded by RajKanaya and K.V.S.

Ramarao, has closed series A round ofventure capital funding, with $15 millionfrom Alloy Ventures and North BridgeVenture Partners. Founded in 2008, theSan Jose headquartered company devel-ops and markets a line of high perform-ance network optimization products. Withthe bountiful support from Series A fund-ing, it plans to pioneer a new category ofproducts that will help Global 2000 enter-prises address the explosion in inter-datacenter traffic resulting from mission criti-cal storage replication, backup, and emerg-ing ‘private’ cloud applications. Theseproducts will be based on the company’spatent-pending Velocity Dedupe En-gine™, the industry’s first ever hardwarebased network deduplication technology.

“We see a demand with Global 2000enterprises or large Web properties that arestruggling to move the ever increasing vol-ume of traffic between their data centers.We solve this problem by deliveringthe accelerated inter-data center networkfabric - providing optimization for criticaltraffic workflows that require high speedand low latency performance across thewide area network,” says Kanaya, CEO,Infineta Systems. “So, out of the gate, wewill bring immense benefits to large en-terprises that are conducting big SANreplication and storage backup jobs. Grad-ually, we will begin also to support theWAN bandwidth and performance needsof such emerging use cases as long dis-tance live migrations, active/active storageredundancies across multiple data centers,and more.

Despite a large market opportunity,

only a few infrastructure companies havebeen funded in the past few years. Thissector requires a large amount of capitalinvestment to get a scalable business upand running. Based on its rollup analysisfrom meetings with customers and pri-mary analyst research, Infineta sees an ini-tial market opportunity in the range of $2billion. Anticipating competition in thesector, Kanaya highlights the company’suniqueness with the fact that no companyuntil now has directly addressed the inter-data center network fabric issue. “Othershave tackled the issue of WAN optimiza-tion but primarily in the context of opti-mizing traffic between users residing inbranch offices and data centers. The cus-tomer problem we solve is fundamentallydifferent,” he says. With its focus on sig-nificant technology innovation and a man-agement team with proven track record,the 20 people strong company looks for-ward to revolutionizing inter-data centerWAN acceleration.

$ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $

Axtria Closes$2.5 MillionSeries AFunding

Infineta Systems Closes $15 MillionSeries A Funding

Raj Kanaya

Jaswinder Chadda

Social software, as we all know,started in the middle of the lastdecade as a new way to en-

hance individual self-expressionthrough media sharing, content cre-ation, and interaction. Since then, ithas quickly spread to other areassuch as marketing and now it entersthe core of the enterprise.

CIOs today are looking at not justkeeping the lights on, but at ways toimprove the way their organization op-erates. This year, social software isamong the top trends of corporate IT,

along with virtualization and cloudcomputing. The expectation is that so-cial software will positively contributeto knowledge management, processefficiency, innovation, and organiza-tion ability to respond to change.

If one observes the flurry of recentproduct announcements, a commonthing noticeable is a simple set of Web2.0 like tools, integrated into a social ac-tivity stream private to an organization.Too many products appear similar intheir approach. However, I believe thatbringing great adoption within an orga-nization’s internal user base (typically asmaller community, compared to thepublic social networks on the Web) re-quires a mix of social activity with busi-ness content.

We designed Qontext as an enter-prise social network that easily inte-grates with other business applicationsused by sales, marketing, HR, engineer-ing, service, distribution, and more. It issimilar to the Salesforce Chatter™ and

Tibco Tibbr™ that bring applicationfeeds into social interaction streams forits users. Qontext goes a step further, tocreate a two-way flow between applica-tions and the enterprise social network,enabling contextual collaboration (hencethe name Qontext).

I believe that one of the greatestchallenges for product vendors in the en-terprise social software space is to stepup the pace of their product innovationto match the quickly growing wish listof their user communities. One is nolonger satisfied with just tweets, filesharing, and discussion forums. Theproducts would soon grow and special-ize in different directions such as thoseoriented to internal and pre-existing con-tent, partner and customer interactions,highly mobile and distributed work-forces, departmental use-cases, andmore. Young product vendors are betterequipped in this nascent market to inno-vate faster and bring products that es-tablished vendors may want to acquire.


CEO SPOTLIGHT

In the last few years, I have observeda paradigm shift in the mobile spaceboth in the US and the markets

abroad. The next 2-3 years will bring ina lot of opportunities for entrepreneurs inthe area of building mobile applications.This development will be similar to thetransition of a computer to desktop PC tolaptop. Any applications running on PCswill be available on the mobile phone inthe near future. And the driving force be-hind this will be the growing demand forsmartphones android, apple, blackberry,windows, and the development platform

they offer. Blackberry leads the pack interms of the opportunities it provides en-trepreneurs for developing ingeniousmobile applications, and android too willsoon catch up in this market because ofits openness.

The mobile applications market itselfwill see a change in the next few years.Thousands of applications have juststarted scratching the surface and there isstill a lot of potential that needs tappinginto. I believe that the focus will changefrom consumer driven applications to en-terprise driven applications on mobile.

Many first time entrepreneurs be-lieve that they can thrive by building ap-plications and selling them on app storesand end up starting a dot com company.What they do not realize is that at the endof the day, each one of them is no differ-ent from the other. This needs to change.Entrepreneurs need to analyze the painpoints in the industry and start focusingon solving them. This requires a good in-dustry experience and capital and a freshlook at their business model. Entrepre-neurs simply need to look at the every-day problems in different sectors anddevelop enterprise mobile applicationsthat can help solve industry specificproblems like those in healthcare, BFSI,utilities, and the other verticals. Whenthis happens, entrepreneurs will drive thenext big wave in the mobile space. si

Enterprise Mobile Applications Will Drive theNext Mobile WaveBy Ashok Samuel, CEO, Bravura TechnologiesBravura Technologies is a leading provider of mobile apps for enterprise use.

Jay Pullur is CEO, Qontext Inc. Qontext integrates social softwarewith enterprise applications to enhance enterprise business effi-ciency through better collaboration.

Enterprise Social Software ATrend that Needs to be Tapped onJay Pullur, CEO, Qontext Inc.


CaresoftPlayingtoWinBack in 2003 and 2007, several FDA reports revealed

that about half of 13 factories in the island country ofPuerto Rico manufactured contaminated pills. Recentreports show that one of the pharmaceutical compa-nies continued exporting pills that it knew contained

small metal particles which were also present inside the bottles thepills were packed in. This was due to the metal content in the drugmanufacturing machineries. Hence, it is imperative that the phar-maceutical sector be properly regulated. This is highly essential andjustified as medicines can either save someone’s life or make mat-ters worse if proper standards are not maintained in drug manufac-turing and information about the medical ingredients and theireffects are not known.

Most pharmaceutical companies today are cautious about hav-ing their business processes in perfect health. Quality control ofraw materials, specifications, formulae, manufactruring processesas well as the finished product is paramount, with exact standardsoften applying to the receipt and storage of raw materials in addi-tion to the storage and dispatch of finished products. For majorplayers like Pfizer, Schering Plough, Novartis, Merck, and John-son & Johnson this means that their practices and systems need tobe updated to enable the industry to be more agile and responsiveand yet maintain a control over complex and costly developmentand production processes.

QQuuiicckk FFaaccttssFFoouunnddeedd

1994FFoouunnddeerr && CCEEOODeepak KhareHHeeaaddqquuaarrtteerrssMiddlesex, NJOOtthheerr OOffffiicceess

Florida, Colorado,Pennsylvania,

California, Canada,Cyprus, Bhopal

HHeeaaddccoouunntt250

VVeerrttiiccaallIT Services

WWeebbssiitteewww.caresoftinc.com

Deepak Khare

By Christo Jacob

CCOOVVEERR SSTTOORRYY

data that an Information Commissionrequires of the government organiza-tions are obtained. At the state level, theState RTI Commission is responsible toensure implementation of the RTI Actin each and every government, semi-government, and public organizations.

Currently, there are no cost effectivesolutions that allow a smooth transitionof an RTI related request. Self imple-mentable, Caresoft’s RTI Soft is a Webbased product that allows the public torequest for information from any gov-ernment organization starting from thekasba (small village) level to city cor-poration, district, and state levels.

CARE RTI handles the complextask of implementing the progress of anRTI application in a very simple andlogical manner. Caresoft implementedthis for government organizations andNGOs in Madhya Pradesh. “RTI Soft isable to provide the mechanism that im-plements the whole RTI framework forany organization looking to be compli-ant with the reporting requirements ofthe State Information Commission as

well as the Central Information Com-mission,” says Rajnish Murab, Directorof Sunita (M) Foundation, an NGO fo-cusing on helping people help them-selves. Currently, the company’s 15member sales team in Bhopal is in talkswith implementing the same in othergovernment organizations in MadhyaPradesh and other states like Uttaran-chal and Chhattisgarh.

From Services to Practices - Care-soft’s 360 Degree ViewCaresoft’s best practices in Hyperion,security services, and Quality frame-work could bring in lot more traction.Caresoft, being an oracle core partner,implements end-to-end Hyperion solu-tions for their clients. Hyperion is a fi-nancial management suite of solutionsfrom Oracle, which takes care of thecomplete financial management re-quirements of a company - switchingroutes, planning, auditing, financialforecasting, and doing all kinds of fi-nancial analysis like actual expectedbudget versus forecasted revenue and

more. It also helps in financial consoli-dation. For instance if a US based or-ganization has a profit center in Mexico,five profit centers in China, two costcenters in India, and a sales team in Eu-rope, it will help to consolidate the fi-nancial reports of the globalorganization. It will also generate finan-cial statements as per the local generallyaccepted accounting practices in eachcountry.

AMResorts, a group of more than20 resorts spread across Latin Americaand the Caribbean with the headquarterscoordinating from the United States, isa global resort management company.The company found that there were a lotof flaws in the financial statements re-ceived from over 20 resorts all over theworld due to which it lost millions ofdollars. The properties under AMRe-sorts were on a rapid growth trajectoryand, therefore, needed a centralized yetflexible BI system. With a rising re-quirement for a common platform of re-porting, AMResorts was gearingtowards automation of financial reportsand increasing its reach to more andmore granular levels of analysis when itselected Caresoft as its Hyperion im-plementer. Caresoft has handled AM-Resorts Hyperion project since its seedstage and is now more a part of AMRe-sorts’ team rather than just an imple-mentation partner. This project was afull life-cycle development project in

Caresoft, a provider of CustomSoftware Development, Temporary ITStaff Augmentation, and OutsourcedQA is well aware that the complexitiesand challenges of documenting proce-dures, monitoring processes, authoriza-tions, and managing heterogeneoustracking records are not trivial exer-cises. Deepak Khare, CEO, Caresoftwas early to have a strong understand-ing of the major transition that is evolv-ing in the pharmaceutical sector and nowonder most of the major players todayare knocking at his doors for the same.“In fact the very first customer of ourswas from the pharmaceutical vertical.This has given an extra mileage to us inhaving a better understanding of thisvertical,” says Khare.

Caresoft’s customer, M. P. Phar-maceuticals, had complicated sys-tems, long processes, numerous rawmaterials, and above all, a largeamount of human involvement in theprocess of making medicines. Thereare frequent audits, and there is verystrict demand for quality control dataat all stages of the manufacturingprocess. The company needed a state-of-the-art Laboratory InformationManagement System (LIMS) to runtheir labs. However, LIMS does notcome cheap. The cost of a typical im-plementation of LIMS exceedsa minimum of Rs 50 Lakhs.

But Caresoft’s Care QCMShas helped its customers in ad-dressing this issue, improvingproduct and services quality,work processes, efficiencies, andmorale, while reducing cost,standardizing business by givingit a consistent approach to oper-ations, meeting government pur-chasing policies, givingconfidence to customers thattheir quality needs will be met,improving customer satisfaction,minimizing fraud, reducing re-work and wastage, and meetingquality standards set by differentcountries. Care QCMS is a Web

based system that works on the SaaSmodel and does not require any clientside installation of software or serverside installation. Built on XML, XSL,and AJAX architecture, the facility letsthe client start Care QCMS within 60minutes of the subscription approval.For M. P. Pharmaceuticals this was agreat relief. The team has been ex-tremely happy with the implementationof Care QCMS. “We would recommendit to any company looking to implementa quality control system for batch man-ufacturing. The Caresoft Team workedvery closely with us to customize andimplement it in our unique situation.Not only is their support staff very re-sponsive and knowledgeable but theyhave also met and exceeded all of our

expectations,“ says Mukesh Nema, Di-rector, M. P. Pharmaceuticals. Khareconfirms that the product has workedwell among midsized companies thatare in the range of $5 to 50 million.

But rather than concentrating on onevertical, Khare felt the need to expandthe company’s portfolio across variousverticals and gain mindshare of the cus-tomers in finance, energy, insurance,manufacturing, public sector, telecom,and many more. Winning the mindshareof an Indian government organizationitself is one of the biggest testimonialsabout Caresoft’s confidence among itscustomers. It was Caresoft’s RTI Softthat was able to grab attention of thepublic sector.

The RTI (Right to Information) Actis currently being implemented allacross India to improve the governance,open the administrative processes of thegovernment, and more importantly tomake the government accountable. Fol-lowed by the enforcement of the RTIAct, the citizens of the country havegained access to the records of the cen-tral and the state governments. The RTIAct empowers an Indian citizen to askfor information from any of the govern-ment departments, but the pain point formost of them is the accessibility of in-formation. The RTI Act implementation

generates enormous amountof paperwork. Every RTI ap-plication must be trackedand the information re-quested must be disbursedwithin the stipulated time.The State Information Com-missions are responsible forensuring proper implemen-tation of the RTI Actthroughout the respectivestates. The State InformationCommissions report mattersof governance to the CentralInformation Commission ona regular basis. The issuesare tracked till the informa-tion requested is providedand it is ensured that all the


Dhaval Desai

Caresoft’s Hyperion PracticeBoutique Hyperion Implementation Practice. Extreme Hyperion Expertise.

20/20 Platform: Guaranteed 20% reduction in operating cost for existing projects, 20% reduction in budget for new projects, and 20% improvement in Quality of Service

“No-Flu�” Project Delivery Team. Everyone on the team is Hands-On, Experienced, Hyperion Guru.

Industry’s strongest onsite-o�shore Hyperion Implementation Team.

• Secure infrastructure design and analysis.• Penetration testing and vulnerability assessment.• Securing web application.• Network & Disaster Recovery availability assessment.• Firewall and router reviews.• Perform an IDS/IPS rule set review.

Caresoft’s IT Security Practice

SLAs are contractsand so are very dry;it is worthy to believe in going beyond the contractand providing thehuman touch toone’s services


which Caresoft assisted AMResorts toautomate its procedures on all the threescenarios – actual, budget, and forecast.

Amit Sanghi, Caresoft’s EPM Solu-tions Architect says, “Our Hyperionteam tirelessly worked for extendedhours breaking complexities of themaze of financial systems throughoutthe company to capture, centralize, andautomate them into a single financialdata management system. It is truly sat-isfying to see how our System releasesthe otherwise blocked time of financialanalysts from mundane spreadsheet ac-tivities by automating most of the num-ber crunching. Free from much of report

preparation and reporting tasks we arehappy to see that they can now partici-pate more on the growth frontiers of thecompany with their CFO.” Currently,the team of Financial Analysts at AM-Resorts manages the reports in a jiffy onthe new financial consolidation systemthat Caresoft has implemented, insteadof spending all of their time in consoli-dating spreadsheets. The system takescare of all currency conversions and itcreates consolidated financial state-ments for entire company at the touchof a button. Emmanuel Samia, SeniorFinancial Analyst at AMResorts says,“Caresoft has done a great job. We arevery happy with the quality of their sup-port. They go the extra mile in their cus-tomer support. We are glad that wechose them as our implementation part-ner.” “We implemented the system inrecord 24 weeks – from start to finish. Itwas like a whirlwind; when we hearvictory stories like this, it makes it allworth it,” says Dhaval Desai - Hyper-ion Practice Head, Caresoft.

Caresoft also focuses on securityservices that are named Second Prac-tice. In order to have focused provision

of information security advice and as-surance services within the context ofindustry and country-specific regulatoryrequirements, Caresoft has partneredwith Symantec. It provides end point se-curity, network security, and applicationsecurity. Caresoft has built long term re-lationships with major clients and infor-mation security stakeholders in both thepublic and private sectors, providing ex-ceptional customer focus throughout itsbusiness units. With its modus operandi,work philosophy, and commitment toalways providing the very best to itsclients, the company has helped themdevelop several long term and success-

ful associations. It provides onsite serv-ices, audits, and assessment with thehelp of their team of CISSP certified ex-perts who have years of experience indifferent areas and from varied compli-mentary backgrounds as MCAs, CEH,CISSP,CISM, auditors, and also the ed-ucation vertical. Its pragmatic approachto IT security begins with the process ofin-depth assessment, and then based onthe analysis it can suggest and providehelp in creating and publishing appro-priate security standards for the client’senvironment. The standards may in-clude specific controls for the various

platforms, a set of best practices thatcross over the platforms, and linkagesof the standards to higher level policies,governmental regulations, and lot more.

Another practice that Caresoft fo-cuses on is quality assurance frame-work. In 2002, a study commissionedby the US Department of Commerce’sNational Institute of Standards andTechnology concluded that softwarebugs, or errors, are so prevalent and sodetrimental that they cost the US econ-omy an estimated $59 billion annually,that is about 0.6 percent of the gross do-mestic product. A good quality assur-ance framework for software takes intoaccount two factors - the ability to func-tionally test all the specifications forwhich the software was built and theability to test how efficiently and pre-dictably the software will run under allspecified conditions. Caresoft has com-plete understanding of customer needs.Caresoft’s QA services ensure that thereare quick QA implementations done forthese frameworks, where you can de-velop the portal quickly and roll it outin two months from scratch to end. Forinstance, if there is an organization thatdevelops portals as quickly as one intwo months, it is difficult for the QAteam to keep pace with it. So, for thisCaresoft has developed a set of tools,pre-designed templates, and a libraryfor frameworks that help the company’sQA frameworks rapidly. The knowl-edge of tools like Documentum,WebLogic, WebSphere, and iPlanet en-abled them to deliver the full benefitsof JAVA technologies. Moreover,Khare was quick to prove their cus-tomers, how it can reduce their ITbudget using proven Microsoft tech-nologies such as COM, MTS, and Vi-sualBasic.

Commitment Beyond ContractDespite a myriad of products and serv-ices on offer, the foundation of Care-soft’s business success lies in thecustomer centric culture within thecompany. The company promotes a

culture of commitment and curiosity;hence not believing in signing unreal-istic deals. Since inception, every asso-ciate is instilled with the values andculture the company stands for, andthey are tuned to the fact that it is be-yond the contracts that relationships arebuilt. Khare made sure that most of theemployees had a relentless researchand development mindset and a com-mitment to stay ahead of the technol-ogy curve with continuous in-housetraining and career development. Thishas boosted each individual in theirteam to take ownership of their actionsand realize how individual actionsbuild a champion team.

The commitment of Caresoft re-flects in its motto itself - ‘We Care’.The company has a legacy of bringinga million dollar smile to its customersthrough its best of the class customerservice. Khare always wanted to have adeep understanding of the customersatisfaction. So, in order to serve itscustomers better, the company has setup a very stringent methodology incustomer care service. It has monthlycustomer care service reviews that itpresents in detail to the customers on aquarterly basis. In fact, this has helpedCaresoft to prove themselves to theircustomers how they have met the re-quirements according to Service LevelAgreements (SLAs), and how theyhave gone beyond the SLAs. “Accord-ing to me, SLAs are contracts but very

dry. We believe in going beyond thecontract and providing the humantouch,” says Khare.

Life@CaresoftThe company is not only well knownfor its unique customer services, butalso as a great place to work in. Thecompany is keen on grooming the em-ployees and creating a place wherethey can learn and grow. The key toCaresoft’s success is the belief thatsomething great is always out there,waiting to be discovered, and the effer-vescent entrepreneurial spirit om-nipresent in the company. “In keepingwith the Caresoft culture, we celebrateall achievements - big and small, to-gether as a team. We take fun seriouslyand believe in working hard and party-ing harder,” says Varsha Sepaha, HRManager, Caresoft. Summer picnicsand Christmas-season parties for chil-dren and adults offer everyone the op-portunity to meet in more relaxedcircumstances and look back on a jobwell done. Having grown rapidly overthe last decade, Caresoft still enjoys anenvironment more like a small startupwith a high degree of flexibility in rolesand a minimum of structure, guideline,and policy. Common sense is the ruleand good judgement is everyone’s re-sponsibility. “This is what makes usproud to be one of America’s fastestgrowing companies and a genuine suc-cess story,” she says. si

Behind the SceneWilliam Shakespeare once said“Time has a different appeal foreveryone.” This is the same in caseof Deepak Khare too. Founded in thefall of 1994 to provide software con-sulting services to Fortune 500 com-panies, Caresoft has grown steadily,even as the software industry itselfwent through the bubble and bustcycles. A graduate in mechanical en-gineering, Khare has founded sev-eral businesses in the last 18 years.Currently, many of these businessesare flourishing. Khare never hesi-tated to try out new ventures. Backin his career, even though he hadfailed ventures like Greating-town.com, and a few more, Kharewas not pulled down. On the con-trary, learning from his mistakes herose like a phoenix. “If we lookaround, whether it is in the US orIndia or elsewhere, everybodywants to move forward, achieve ex-cellence, and do well with one’s life.That’s where entrepreneurship wasborn out of. The only thing thatstops people from becoming entre-preneurs is the fear of risk and fail-ure and fear of people. Like anythingin life you win some and you losesome. You may lose more often thanyou win, but a single win might over-shadow all of your previous losses.One must be resilient, learn from fail-ures, and move forward because en-trepreneurship keeps you young,fun, and alive.”

During his career as a softwareconsultant, he worked with presti-gious clients like J.P. Morgan Chase,Hoffman LaRoche, Scholastic, Man-agement Science Associates, andWarner Systems. In fact this hashelped Khare take Caresoft into thenext level of it growth. This steadygrowth has not gone unnoticed.Today, Caresoft is a highly respectedcompany because of Khare’s magi-cal touch.


Varsha Sepaha

You may lose more often than you win, buta single win might overshadow all of yourprevious losses

Caresoft Team


Entrepreneurs often ask a fairly simplesounding question “what do I need to getDFJ excited about my idea”. The answeris really two-fold. There is a mix of sec-tor-agnostic and sector-specific re-

sponse. Let me focus on the sector-agnostic first.DFJ, as an investor, is focused on a blend of early tomid-stage investment (series A, B and C). Typically,an investment thesis revolves around team, technol-ogy/differentiation, traction/ validation and marketsize/opportunity. At an early stage, however, thereoften isn’t much that an entrepreneur can offer. Theteam is incomplete, the technology may not be de-veloped or fully baked and given that there isn’t aproduct or service, there isn’t any traction or rev-enues. What does matter at that stage is undeniablepassion and an absolutely resolute attitude towards“making it happen, come what may”.

A perfect example of that was DFJ’s investmentin Attero, emerging as a leader in the electronicwaste recycling business in India. When Nitin andRohan, brothers and co-founders approached DFJ,they had virtually nothing except a power point anda spreadsheet. But it was the passion that they ex-uded, and the fact that they were willing to back thatpassion by investing their family savings, that con-vinced NEA-IndoUS ventures and DFJ to put in$6million into the company. We were also convincedthat the market for ewaste was enormous and grow-ing, and that trying to replicate what Attero wasplanning on doing was going to be non-trivial (inessence, it’s not a business that would create manyme-too’s).

On the later stage front, the entrepreneur needsto be able to convince DFJ that, in a very capital ef-ficient manner, he/she has been able to make solidprogress, that the business model has either beenproven or on its way to being proven, and finally thatthe market is large and growing. Examples of latestage investments for DFJ are companies like Clear-trip and iYogi where the capital requirement was forscaling the business, not for proving the business.

Finally, what has to be clear in the entrepreneur’smind is the overall potential (how big can it be overwhat period of time). Fund IX, from which DFJ isinvesting, is a $650 million fund. DFJ is looking toturn that into a $2billion+ return. For DFJ to get ex-cited, the startup has to have the potential of return-ing at least $50 million or more to the fund. To make

the math simple, assuming that DFJowns 20percent of a given companyupon exit, the exit value of the com-pany has to be at least $250million..Before approaching DFJ, the entre-preneur in his/her mind needs to beconvinced that the idea is big and fora larger fund, is going to “move theneedle” for a fund’s IRR. I have oftensaid, that before approaching VCs,entrepreneurs should do their home-work and make sure that the fundsthat they approach are in line with theoverall business that he/she is look-ing to build.

Coming to the topic of specificsectors, DFJ’s name has been syn-onymous for years with consumermedia (internet and mobile) andcleantech. Those continue to be keythemes in India as well. But in addi-tion, India holds tremendous promisein areas such as healthcare, educa-tion, logistics/distribution, and retail.I often joke that the sure shot way ofmaking money in India is to open aninstitution that is a combination of aschool, hospital and a temple. Thekey challenge that companies face inIndia is truly around scale. The pos-sible online revolution holds promise(whether that happens on the PC orthe mobile phone, remains to beseen), so consumer media is some-thing that we are closely watching.Right now, a pure online play is stilldifficult in India. There is often aphysical infrastructure required interms of handholding, and servicing(examples are plenty in travel, matri-monial, jobs etc.). But it’s a matter ofwhen, not if, India will start hittingthe types of numbers that China, forexample, has shown around areassuch as online gaming, ecommerce,entertainment, mobile infrastructureand applications to name a few. ForPC based online penetration to get tocritical mass, reliable power issues

need to be addressed. In the mean-time, the mobile phone may becomethe so-called First Screen. As con-nectivity improves, as feature-richhandsets become more affordable,and as new business models around

new applications proliferate, the mo-bile revolution will continue to un-fold. As an example, I was recentlyspeaking with an entrepreneur whoenables people to be able to capturevoice, photos and video and sendthem as sms to their friends/family.

Additionally, other people can actas “mobile jockeys” broadcasting in-formation or creating interactive mo-bile sessions with thousands ofspectators or participants. What wasastounding to me was the fact that80percent of this company’s regis-tered user base was not in metros butin tier 2/3 towns, where more andmore people can afford gprs hand-sets, but without reliable power, haveno use for a TV or a PC, even thoughthey have both in their homes. As aresult, they resort to the mobile as thedevice for communication and enter-tainment.

Additionally, the entire BoP rep-resents an enormous market, whichprovides opportunities for entrepre-neurs in the same areas as mentionedabove (financial services, healthcare,education, cleantech, mobile, re-tail…). The challenge yet again isscalability. Tapping a large yet frag-mented user base holds promise butwill be tough. But those who cancrack it, will create large sustainableenterprises. The MFI movement isone such success story that is playingout. There will surely be others.

Bottom line: The T’s (team, trac-tion and technology) and the M (mar-ket) on the one hand are important forany business, but key to rising abovethe noise on the other hand is passionand conviction that are infectious.DFJ is interested in sectors that arelarge and growing, ideally whereleveraging technology, one can builda solid trustworthy brand and createorganization in an otherwise highlyunorganized fragmented space. si

Startup Ideasthe DFJWWoouulldd LLiikkeettoo FFuunndd

VVCC TTaallkk:: By Mohanjit JollyThe author is Executive Director, DFJ India

The entrepreneurneeds to be able to convince a VC that, in avery capital efficientmanner, he/she hasbeen able to make solidprogress, that the business model has either been proven oron its way to beingproven, and finally thatthe market is large andgrowing.

In 2010, mobile gamingend-user revenue is to grow19 percent globally, exceed-ing $5.6 billion, says Gart-

ner. Gartner estimates70-80 percent of all mobile

consumer applicationsdownloaded are mobile

games. Additionally, 60-70percent of these down-loaded games are "free."

The market will continue tosee steady growth through2014, when the market is

projected to reach $11.4 billion.

Mohanjit Jolly


The case for ‘Greening’ the datacentreBusinesses today rely on telecoms anddata networking to run their organisa-tions but this increasing demand hasalso had an impact on carbon emis-sions. In fact, “IT- equipment world-wide is responsible for roughly 3-4percent of CO2 emissions which cor-responds to the total amount of CO2emitted by airplanes” says SimonMingay from Gartner.

It is likely that global carbon diox-ide emissions from Internet Data Cen-tres (IDC) will continue to grow. Forexample, data centre energy consump-tion as a percentage of total U.S. elec-tricity use has doubled since 2000, andIDCs and servers will double their en-ergy consumption again by 2012, ac-cording to the US Environmental

Protection Agency.In the UK, energy consumption

from non-domestic ICT (Info-CommTechnology) equipment increased bymore than 70 percent from 2000-2006and is expected to grow by a further 40percent by 2020, according to a reportby the UK-based Environmental ITLeadership Team (EILT).

Making the U-TurnProviding ‘greener’ telecoms and datanetworking is fast becoming a priorityfor all CIO and IT Directors today.This is a sea change in perspective –that has come about in just the last fewyears with many IT and IDC managersfeeling caught between their existingIT best practices and environmentally-sustainable computing. They tell usthat their data centers was never de-

signed to be environmentally efficientand infact, were set up to cater for re-dundancy and failover; this by default,meant more servers than optimally re-quired, leading to greater power con-sumption. Now, IT managers arehaving to look at options to makethese data centers green.

These compulsions, actually, arenot just restricted to the IT or IDCManager level. Running of energy ef-ficient datacentres will become moreprevalent forming part of the definedresponsibilities and KPIs of the CIO.Metrics will involve more efficientuse of the IT budget, with enhancedperformance and efficiencies – lead-ing them to consider increasing use ofvirtulisation solutions and makingdata storage, retrieval and transfer farmore efficient.

It’s not all over... there’s hope yetContrary to popular belief, there is anatural convergence between greenpractices and good business. Effi-ciency in business invariably meansgetting the best effect for the lowestcost. Additionally, the high cost ofpower means the potential savingsfrom efficient IDC management arehuge. Research firm IDC estimatesthat for every dollar spent on computerhardware, another 50 cents is spent onenergy. It predicts that will increase tomore than 71 cents by 2011.

Cable&Wireless sees the first partof reducing consumption as organisa-tional. Interest needs to start at the topwith support from the CEO and the

senior management team. Naturally,any program to increase IT energyefficiency and reduce a carbon foot-print also needs to be part of corpo-rate social responsibility andenvironmental efforts.

However, most ICT departmentsare only marginally involved in theirorganisation’s social responsibilitystrategies and a significant proportionhas never been asked to focus on en-ergy efficiency. It is essential to meshthe IT group’s goals with the organi-sation’s facilities management teamand establish baseline measurementson energy use and costs.

The second part is the design andrunning of data centres themselves.Many data centres today were built atthe time of the tech boom. They tendto lack floor space, and have difficultyin accommodating today’s high-den-sity servers. Energy management willbecome more and more an issue forIDC managers when procuring newhardware and in daily operations.

The third is to help educate themarket about energy efficiency and toadopt standardized measurements.The role of ICT suppliers here is alsocritical. They need to be able to speaka common language with standardmetrics. Currently, each chip andserver vendor has its own definitionsand green practices and according toan industry survey, some 60 percentof ICT professionals consider vendorenvironmental information from theirsuppliers to be confusing.

Finally, companies should fullyutilise existing computing powerthrough consolidation into fewer andhigher performance systems. As theymake commitments on carbon emis-sion targets, government leaders needto recognize that their compliancepolicies can in fact add to the data stor-age load. Instead, governments need toprovide incentives to ICT departmentsto implement Green IT practices and

technologies as part of national carbonemission programs.

Reducing the impact and optimizingresourcesWith energy resources growingscarcer, and energy prices rising, thismeans data centre energy costs overthe lifetime of a server could easily ex-ceed hardware costs sometime in thefuture. Taking care of the environmentis about a combination of solutions,services and improved processes thatreduce the environmental impactwhile reducing both resources andcosts.

Customers are looking for dy-namic data centre solutions and a ho-listic approach to “greeninfrastructure” to save energy, cooling,space and resources but they need tohave the right balance between busi-ness benefits and environmental bene-fits in data centre space. Businesses need to adopt a three-stepdata centre strategy:

1. Reduce Consumption - Implementbest-practices based technology andprocesses; offer products, solutionsand services that aim to balancebusiness and environmental bene-fits. a. Deploy servers, which as reduce

power consumption of CPUs andI/O by improved, chip technolo-gies and manufacturingprocesses.

b. Select server technology thatprovides improved computingperformance per Watt of powerdissipation.

c. Increase efficiency of serverpower supplies.

2. Optimize Data Centre Infrastruc-ture - Offering more efficientblade servers and cooling tech-nologies. a. Fully utilize existing computing

power through consolidationonto fewer and higher perform-ance systems.

b. Improve utilization of IT sys-tems with virtualization tech-nology.

3. Effective Use of Resources - De-ploying more efficient bladeservers and cooling technologiesand are implementing IDC consol-idation and virtualization. a. Flexibly control power con-

sumption by means of dynamicIT solutions

b. Actively seek the appropriatebalance between power costsand optimal server performance

c. Reduce the energy costs to aminimum by transforming staticdata centres to a Dynamic DataCentre by creating pools of com-puter and storage resources thatare provided with applications-on-demand.

d. Better utilization by combina-tion of blade server with virtu-alization methods andtechnologies.

e. Integration of IT Managementtools to react faster to resourceallocation of servers.

f. Automated, intelligent informa-tion life-cycle management strat-egy (ILM) to put the data whereit consumes the least power iskey for an energy efficient stor-age pool.

Time for clear direction anc actionBusinesses today need to look attheir current and future telecom anddata networking requirements andmake the changes now in order toreap the benefits in the future. Byconsolidating services, organisationswill not only improve their carbonfootprint, they’ll also be able to makecost and efficiency savings that willimprove the bottom line. si

Facing Upto theGreen Challenge

Here’s how IT and Data Centre Managers can respond

TTeecchhnnoollooggyy:: By Vikas BansalThe author is Director – Carrier Sales, India and South AsiaCable&Wireless Worldwide


100 different services that add up to plumvalue added services. There is hardly asubscriber who has not subscribed to aservice or two at a minimum of Rs.15(33 cents) per month.

If you include data services likebrowsing the web to send email, down-loading music or streaming video towatch TV, the billing potential for themobile companies is huge and is likelyto grow manifold in the third generation(3G) regime. By subscribing to datapackages on a mobile phone the sub-scriber can navigate unknown routes oreven make international calls for a song.

While all 600 million Indian mobilesubscribers don’t own a handset that sup-ports data services, it is only a matter oftime when some of the cheaper ‘copycat’look-alike handsets — as market re-

searcher, IDC calls them — will bewithin every mobile user’s reach for aslittle as one-tenth the average price of asmart phone.

Industry analysts expect that a num-ber of service providers could be offer-ing mobile voice over internet protocol(VoIP) services to offer cheap interna-tional calls. Right now making interna-tional calls is not only expensive it alsoneeds activation, often for a fee and a fatsecurity deposit. Once the mobile VoIPservices are available, the call rates coulddrop from the current Rs.6.40 (14 cents)per minute at the lower band to as low asRe.1-Rs.2 (2-4 cents) per minute.

Already a few options like the iTelMobile Dialer Express available in themarket allow a phone subscriber tomake VoIP call from the mobilephone. With the mass deployment ofWi-Fi networks in many countries andthe introduction of cheap GPRS serv-ice, calling from mobile set using VoIPtechnology is getting popular.

The telecom tariffs in India, amongthe lowest in the world, have silentlybeen making a visible difference at thesociological level — you see it in abus, train or plane. At another levelthere are mobile air space consumerswho are busy converting phone callsfrom a primarily day time activity to a24/7 activity.

With a variety of cheap night-timecalling packages on offer, it is not un-common for friends to call each otherlate into night and for much longer dura-tions. With value offerings targeted in thenon-peak hours, the service providershave been able to make inroads into thesleeping hours of young student com-munity successfully.

The time is not far when the mobilerevolution will embrace the remaininghalf of the country — at a steady rate ofadding 20 million new mobile connec-tions every month — in less than threeyears. The economies of scale will hope-fully extract the India demographic ad-vantage for many more seconds at thecost of a single paisa. si

Telecom CompaniesRevive Value of the

Indian Paisa

Visiting us during her va-cations, Manjari, myteenage niece, asked meif I would help her witha summer project. I

agreed. It involved the study of coins.The curious kid wanted to know whata one-paisa coin looked like. Her nextquestion: ‘What can one paisa buy?’

We were amused as to why ateacher would give a ‘one paisa’ proj-ect when the cheapest toffee costs 50paisa, or around one cent. Manjari’ssearch into the shape, size, and metal-lic content of one paisa coin landedher at the Reserve Bank of India’s(RBI’s) monetary museum. She learntthat over a period of time, the cost-benefit considerations led to a grad-ual discontinuance of 1, 2 and 3 paisacoins in 1970s.

Then came a discovery of sorts.There was something that was wortha paisa — offered by the burgeoning,yet highly competitive, Indian tele-com industry. For just one paisa, onecan talk to someone in the farthestcorner of India for one second, orsend an SMS of 160 characters to anyone of the 600 million mobile phoneusers in India. Not only that, one canextract more from the serviceprovider if the bill plan is well cho-sen. Of course, it also depends on thedesperation of the service provider toacquire and retain a customer.

The Indian telecom industry, theworld’s fastest growing, must be cred-ited with applying all the marketingtricks ranging from product or servicesampling, marginal costing, happyhours, family and friends packs among

others to hook the customer.This explains the offer for send-

ing 15,000 SMSs for Rs.99 (around$2) a month — a cool 3 SMSs for 2paise. Or for just Rs.299 (around$6.5) to call 65 hours, or full-hour oftalking with your mother for underRs.5 (11 cents). If your circle offriends extends nationally, at Rs.599($13.3) per month plan you can talkfor 65 hours, packing in 60 minutesof calling for a little over Rs.9 ($2).

For the service provider there is littlemoney to be made in the local or long-distance calls from and individual sub-scriber. However, money is made fromvalue added services — ranging fromring tones and astrology, music down-loads and jokes, stock alerts to cricketscores, International calls and data serv-ices. It is estimated that there are at least

According to a report byBusiness Software Alliance,global loss due to software

piracy has reached $51.4 bil-lion in 2009, with $16.5 bil-

lion in the Asia-Pacificregion. Despite some achieve-ments in the fight to protectintellectual property rights,43 percent of software usedin computers globally in

2009 was pirated. The over-flow of counterfeits was

largely due to the growth ofthe personal computers in the

emerging markets.

BBuussiinneessss:: By Sanjit ChatterjeeThe author is Director Global Marketing and Strategy,REVE Systems Cable&Wireless Worldwide


This lack of visibility and account-ability has left many employers won-dering whether they actually receivethe benefits promised to them by theiroutplacement consultants. Employersare not doing enough to demand ac-countability and results from their out-placement vendors, including the mostimportant result of all - helping laid-off employees find new jobs asquickly as possible.

Driving Accountability withTechnologyBut times are changing. It’s increas-ingly clear that the old model of out-placement is broken. Employeesaren’t happy with it, and neither areemployers.

Fortunately, there are indicationsthat more employers are demandingaccountability when it comes to out-placement. Three trends have con-tributed to this development:1. As large employers expand out-

placement services to their entireemployee population, the cost ofservices has increased – andmeasuring results has become ahigher priority.

2. As more small and medium sizedbusinesses offer outplacementsupport, they tend to be more con-cerned with the hard benefits thanthe soft benefits of outside con-sulting services.

3. Technology is making it easier foroutplacement firms to delivermeasurable and cost-effective re-sults to employers of all sizes.

The creative leveraging of tech-nology, in fact, is critical to increasingboth employee and employer satisfac-tion with outplacement services.

Technology Can Positively ImpactRecruitmentWhen it comes to recruitment, yourhuman resources division will tell you,if you didn’t already know, that theprocess can be very difficult and long,and the ability to know for certain

whether a candidate who seems like anexcellent fit for the job will indeedhave longevity with your company isakin to having one’s own crystal ball.

The complaints that many compa-nies have about using third-party re-cruiters, however, involves the quality ofthe talent they receive through theirdoors, the lack of communication, andthe expense. Certainly, this current eco-nomic climate has precipitated an em-ployer’s market; skilled talent is out thereand looking for new positions. The diffi-culty with an economy on the upswing,particularly for cost-conscious busi-nesses, though, is that employees mightjump ship once the market for their jobskills opens up and other positions be-come available.

As I mentioned, no one has that crys-tal ball. But the best way to mitigate thatrisk is to start with a wide and diversifiedpool of talent in the selection process anda third-party vendor who focuses on ac-countability and considers you a priorityclient. Also, find ways to reduce yourcost of on-boarding, using technology toshorten the time-to-hire and by closelyinvestigating often large fees charged bysome recruiters. Will it cost you 25 per-cent of a $70,000 salary in recruiting feesto hire a new person to fill that position?That’s more than $17,000. What if youhad to do that twice – or even three times- in one year?

The truth is that technology, whenproperly leveraged, has the ability tochange the recruiting landscape by find-ing a wider pool of talent, reducing time-to-hire, and significantly bringing downcosts. There are vendors out there who

can offer this to clients, if they are chosenbased on their ability to deliver results,and they are given clear direction as tothe collective goal.

A Formula for AccountabilityTechnology makes accounta-bility in outplacement and re-cruitment services moreaccessible. However, it is stillincumbent upon employers toexpect – and demand – results.This means that the employershould construct a model bywhich to measure the ROI ofits outplacement and recruit-

ment services provider.While every employer’s situation is

unique, companies that wish to assess theperformance of their current outplace-ment firm – or determine which firm tochoose during a selection process –should be asking the following questions:1. Is this firm’s thinking in line with

my strategic business objectives?2. What is the measurement of success,

and does this vendor have the capa-bility to show me an effective meas-urement?

3. In what timeframe does this projectneed to be completed? Does thisfirm have the capability to executewithin that window?

4. How, and how often, will this ven-dor be communicating with myteam?

5. How are my costs determined? Howdoes that compare with my intendedROI?

6. Is there a guarantee associated withtheir work? Do they guarantee tosupport impacted employees untilthe employees find jobs?

Do they guarantee to fill – and keepfilled – the open position for which youcontracted their help in recruiting?

The truth is that there are vendorswho can become as integral to yourbusiness as your on-site employees. Butit requires asking the right questions anddemanding accountability. Those whocan show you that measurement will beglad that you asked. si

Effective managementknows that people are thelifeblood of any business;talented employees areby far a company’s most

valuable asset. Due to today’s dy-namic workplace and the fast pace ofever-changing business processes,employers are increasingly turning totechnology and vendors to assist inmeeting the demands of outplacementand recruitment. But as with any ven-dor relationship, third parties youchoose to do business with must haveclear objectives, defined direction,and accountability. Never is this moreimportant than when they are dealingwith the very heart of your organiza-tion - your employees.

As an example, I would like todiscuss here how technology can andshould be leveraged in both outplace-ment and recruitment to allow themanagement of a company’s humanresources to be as measurable and ac-countable as any other business ini-tiative.

State of the Outplacement IndustryYou may be aware of a recent Holly-wood hit movie, Up in the Air, whichtackled a topic companies in generaldon’t like to discuss: outplacement.This is an industry that grew out of aneed to take care of employees evenafter business climate forced layoffs.

While many HR practitionerswere excited about the prospect ofGeorge Clooney portraying a memberof their profession, they largely havebeen disappointed upon seeing thefilm’s take on corporate layoffs andoutplacement consultants. If you be-lieve the Hollywood version, ‘transi-tion consultants’ offer little more thanglib pep talks and thin ‘packets’ ofdubious value to laid-off workers.

This is certainly not the case inreal life. Today, four out of five em-ployers offer substantive outplace-ment services, ranging from careercoaching and resume help to the iden-tification of job leads, for weeks ormonths after qualifying displaced em-ployees for the program. But manydisplaced employees are unhappywith the assistance they receive, andfor good reason.

In recent surveys in the U.S. andthe UK, approximately 80 percent ofemployers said they offer outplace-ment support, up significantly fromjust a few years ago. A 2009 surveyby the Institute for Corporate Produc-

tivity showed that the US employersspent an average of nearly $3,600 peremployee on outplacement services.Once reserved for managers and ex-ecutives, these services are now typi-cally offered to employees at alllevels of the organization.

To run these programs, the vastmajority of companies turn to outsideconsulting firms. This is a big reasonthat transition management has

emerged as a $3 billion in-dustry in the past decade.

And yet, for all the goodintentions of employers, theresults delivered by out-placement programs havebeen mixed. In the WallStreet Journal story of Au-

gust 20, 2009, ‘Outplacement FirmsStruggle to Do Job’, journalists PhredDvorak and Joann S. Lublin make thecase that traditional outplacementservice packages – such as griefcounseling, group seminars, and theuse of office space – ‘offer littlevalue’ to workers and leave manyfeeling dissatisfied. Since themethodology behind user surveys isflawed, some companies never knowthat their former employees didn’tfind jobs. By some estimates, 40 per-cent of displaced workers who wereoffered outplacement services don’tuse them at all – let alone participatein satisfaction surveys.

HR Meets Technology

CCIIOO PPrrooffiillee:: By Sanjay Sathe

HR vendors you choose to dobusiness with must have clearobjectives, defineddirectionand accountability

Technology has the ability tochange the recruiting landscape by finding a widerpool of talent,reducing time-to-hire, and significantlybringing down costs

Asking theRight Questions

The author is Founder and CEO, RiseSmart


Social networking is replac-ing several traditionalforms of contact manage-ment through its ability toquickly create significant

impact on targeted populations. Therecent decision by Pepsi to avoidSuper Bowl advertising to focus on so-cial networking advertising is an ex-ample. Even though some attemptshave been made by a few health insur-ance companies, enough attention hasnot been paid to the use of social net-working sites in this direction. Withincreasing healthcare costs ruling theheadlines these days, it is importantthat healthcare companies evaluate theuse of social networking features topromote preventive care.

Why Focus on Preventive Healthcare?Most healthcare debates focus on howto reduce the administrative costs in-curred by the insurance companies.

However, insurance companies claimthat about 85 percent of their premiumrevenues go back into paying for serv-ices and only 15 percent of the totalrevenue is spent on administrationoverhead and profits. Hence, even a

small percentage of reduction in theservice provider costs can significantlyreduce the overall price of healthcare.Lifestyle choices and proper preven-tive health measures can significantlyreduce the number of incidents for

members, thus contributing to the costsavings.

How Does Social Networking Helpin Improving Preventive Healthcare?It has been proven in the past, by thelikes of Weight Watchers Clubs, thatsocial pressure definitely helps to im-prove lifestyle. A large percentage ofthe population may not wish to dis-close their weight or eating habits tothe public, or even to friends. But theanonymity offered in these forums willvery likely improve the participationand produce impressive results. A fewsuch applications of social networkingin improving overall health of mem-bers are discussed below.Sharing of Health TipsCreate a social networking site wheremembers can share tips on health andwellness. The content can be moni-tored by qualified physicians for accu-racy and also to ensure that the

comments are appropriate. Thesephysicians can also append their ownsuggestions on the tips. Informationsuch as calories contained in commonfoods, recommended portions for spe-cific diets, and easy cures for commonillnesses can also be shared throughthis site. Magazines already providesimilar columns by physicians and thiswould be more attractive on a website.

Chronic Disease Specific Commu-nitiesCommunities can be created withinsocial networking sites for peoplesuffering from chronic diseases suchas diabetes. These can be promotedthrough organizations such as theAmerican Diabetes Association andcan provide information specific tobetter living conditions of patients.For example, people can share spe-cific diet plans, common exercise op-tions, and other lifestyle traits thatwill help in controlling the disease.Members can also share their ownexperiences with treatments and thelong-term impacts that they are fac-ing. New research and findings re-garding such diseases can gainpublicity through the site.

Preventive Care RemindersAs an incentive for people who signup to such sites, insurance compa-nies can offer preventive care re-minders, such as for annualcheck-ups, vaccinations for kids,and breast examinations for women.Members can share anecdotes ofhow preventive care events helpedthem in identifying problems duringearly stages and in getting timelytreatment. The forum can also havediscussions on common symptomsand suggestions on when to seekprofessional help and treatments.The healthy baby initiative fromAetna is an example of such a pro-gram and it can be extended to socialnetworking sites. There could alsobe reminders on prescription refills

and even text messages that remindpatients to take medication on time.

Lifestyle Communities (joggers,weight watchers, anti-smokinggroups)These communities can provide amedium for people with common in-terests to motivate each other. Thisis based on the principle of WeightWatchers Clubs where peer pressurehelps people achieve difficult tar-gets. Users can share and get infor-mation anonymously.

Provider ReviewsSocial networking sites can be aplatform for the members to discusstheir experiences with healthcareproviders. This will also help the in-surance companies reduce costswhen they are able to direct mem-bers to specific providers who canprovide better and or cheaper serv-ices. User feedback on the site will

also make sure that provider servicesundergo continuous improvement.

Games with ATheme on ReducingHealthcare CostsWith some creative thinking, gamescan be developed to keep a high in-terest level among members to visitthese sites often. Similar to the fa-mous Facebook game of ‘Farmville’,a game can be developed where theplayers get points for healthy behav-ior such as exercise and quitting to-bacco. This will lure the members tovisit the site more often and alsohelp promote the ideas of preventivehealthcare in a fun way to encouragebetter lifestyles.

Challenges to ConsiderWhile the idea sounds promising,several challenges need to be con-sidered. There could be legal issuesregarding the nature of commentsposted by the participants and so ap-propriate legal precautions andguidelines need to be incorporatedinto the site. Any information orcomment that could damage the rep-utation of a service provider may in-vite more legal challenges andlawsuits. Privacy and security con-cerns could also be discouraging fac-tors for implementing these ideas.

Another challenge is to attractthe right kind of audience to thiswebsite. The social media generationof today may not be too worriedabout health at this time and theolder generation may not be socialmedia savvy.

ConclusionEven with all the challenges, thereare some good opportunities for thecompanies that are first movers inthis area - higher participation andretention of members. In short, theearly birds in implementing thistechnology will be able to attract asection of the younger generation totheir fold. si

Social Networking

Preventive Healthcare Through

TTeecchhnnoollooggyy:: BySubhash K ParameswaranThe author is General Manager – Offshore Operations, UST Global

People can share specific diet plans,common exercise options, and otherlifestyle traits that willhelp in controlling thedisease through socialnetworking sites

The networking siteshelp people maintainanonymity while disclosing personalhealth information andseeking and sharinghealth tips

IT spending across all indus-try markets in 2010 will in-crease up to 4.1 percent,exceeding $2.4 trillion. Asper the Gartner report, IT

spending in the banking andsecurities market will re-bound to $396.9 billion in2010, a 4.6 percent increase

from 2009.

check writing process. This was notjust a few numbers; it was thousandsof them in an undocumented, un-known, and totally unexpected loca-tion. Another example is of adeveloper creating a payables reportthat included vendor tax codes andaddresses - a breach of several pri-vacy acts.

Most of us do not even realizethat we have a problem or do not un-derstand the magnitude of it. One ofour customers was expecting to findsocial security numbers in 17 places– but ran our discovery process andfound upwards of 100 locations.What surprised them was not justthe number of locations but howmuch of it was systemic – based onhow their application and databaselogic was written.

So ‘ discovery’ is important notonly for locations, but to understandhow and why the data gets propa-gated. One has to know their risks.There are many reasons why infor-mation gets exposed and discover-ing all sensitive informationlocations in extremely critical. Con-firming and documenting all loca-tions helps organizations understandtheir needs to fully protect theirdata. In fact, we felt this discoveryto be so critical that we built it intoMENTIS Framework, the enginethat runs our solutions, the founda-tion for our platform suite. It is im-portant to regularly discoversensitive information as your appli-cations and databases change, tomaintain full awareness of whereyour information is going and why.Only then can you fully protect it.

A common perception amongstmost is that external attacks are thebiggest threat; but according to theFBI security survey more than 70percent of breaches are internal. One needs to understand what abreach is. It can be as benign as a

developer unknowingly extractingconfidential information while cre-ating a new report. Regardless of in-tent, one has already breached anumber of laws.

Data breaches are a constant oc-currence. In fact, since first Januarythis year, over 100 breaches havebeen made public in the United

States alone. Theses breaches rangefrom those affecting a few recordsto the exposure of over 3 millionrecords.For a company, the cost of thesebreaches could be astronomical.Penalties by state governments areincreasing, but the costs of creditmonitoring services and lawsuits areextremely high. A breach can costanywhere from $45 to $300 perrecord. The average cost of a breachin the US is $6.75 million. And thatdoesn’t even include the intangiblecosts — lost business, cancelledcontracts, and so on. More than onecompany has actually had to folddue to this. In fact, the average cus-tomer attrition due to these reasonsis 32 percent. Stockholder value ishit accordingly.

Our sensitive information man-agement platform provides a com-prehensive suite of tools to identify,protect, and manage sensitive infor-mation in production and non-pro-duction databases and applications.We automate the discovery processfor specific applications and data-bases and have pre-built controls forauditing, masking, monitoring, andreporting for rapid deployment inmultiple environments. It’s our ap-proach – we have a comprehensiveplatform for sensitive informationmanagement. We don’t provide justa piece of the puzzle. The MENTISsolution is an integrated suite thatincludes discovery, masking, moni-toring, and intrusion prevention – allthe products to help customers pro-tect their information throughout itslife in their organizations. We de-signed them to be modular and scal-able. Companies can start out withone or two products and can addproducts to protect more databasesand applications as their needschange, as legislation changes, andas their company grows. si

Many define sensi-tive information aspersonal or corpo-rate data like socialsecurity numbers

or credit card numbers or sales fig-ures. But sensitive information isany data asset that you have a fidu-ciary responsibility to protect, andthere is a gamut of them - from per-sonal information, corporate infor-mation, customer and vendorinformation, to intellectual property.All of this is stored in enterprise-wide relational databases and appli-cations.

Applications and databases werearchitected in a more carefree, lesssecurity-conscious era. They simplyaren't built to protect data. In fact,they are built to make access to dataeasier. But the real issue is that it’sextremely difficult to know whereall of the sensitive information actu-

ally is located within those data-bases and applications.

When these databases and appli-cations were designed, organiza-tions wanted to share information,both internally and externally. Thisresulted in deployment of enter-prise-wide relational databases withcomplex data models and architec-tures. The vendors don’t documentthe locations of sensitive informa-tion – primarily because they don’tknow what data is sensitive for agiven organization.

Since you cannot secure data ifyou don’t know where it is, youhave to locate all of the places that

the database or application has des-ignated for storage and map it toyour application security and otheraccess controls. But there’s anAchilles’ heel to this process andthis is where the risk of data expo-sure becomes acute, which is un-documented locations of sensitiveinformation.

For a very long time, informa-tion was put into databases and ap-plications without worrying aboutexposure. For example, at one of ourclient sites, we found all the em-ployees’ social security numbers ina table where the payroll clerk hadcopied them in order to simplify the


Information Breachthe

TTeecchhnnoollooggyy:: By Rajesh Parthasarathy

Applications and databases were architected in a more carefree, less security-conscious era and so they simply aren't built to protect data

All of the placesthat the databaseor application hasdesignated forstorage has to belocated andmapped to setyour applicationsecurity and otheraccess controls

The author is Founder, MENTIS Software

Threat is Internal

As per Nasscom estimates,Indian IT and BPO sectors

may get $10 billion from Ger-many, Switzerland and Aus-tria by 2020, more than $2.6billion earned from the re-

gions across the IT, BPO andengineering services againstthe market size of over $53billion. The IT services mar-ket in the Germanic countriesis estimated to be $100 bil-lion, of which about $5.6 bil-lion worth of services are

offshored and out of that al-most $1.4 billion comes to

India.

Measuring knowledgeworker productivityand in turn findingout how it con-tributes to an organi-

zation’s overall effectiveness is adifficult proposition, though it is not im-possible. The rewards of doing so aretwofold. Measurement allows the exec-utive management to help an organiza-tion to guide and direct its valuablehuman capital towards the goals thathave been identified and set. In turn, theability to better manage knowledgeworkers opens the door to new and in-novative ways to foster their loyalty, cre-ativity, and productivity.

So, What is Organization Effective-ness?

This isn’t limited to just productivity,though it certainly encompasses it. Pro-ductivity is defined narrowly as theamount of physical output for each unitof productive input, which has been ahuman concern for centuries. The prob-lem comes in defining output for non-manufacturing, service activitiescommonly termed as ‘knowledgework’, these include IT services andproducts, transportation, retail and Lo-gistics, and finance and Insurance re-lated services rendered to individualsand businesses.

Who Contributes to Organization Effectiveness?Each and every employee contributes toorganization effectiveness. Taking intoaccount the skills, experience, and rank

some play a bigger role than others. Es-tablishing a successful and sustainableorganization takes more than manage-ment expertise. It requires genuine lead-ership – the ability to guide individualsand teams to their highest level of col-laboration, innovation, and effective-ness. Today’s leaders play many roles:visionary, role model, architect, de-fender of values, team builder, coach,change agent, strategist, economist, andadvocate for excellence. While produc-tivity and economics are always anissue, today’s leaders also understandthe importance of creating a values-dri-ven vision that becomes the benchmarkfor individual and organizational deci-sion making. Leaders seek best practicesthat produce integrity, adaptability, sus-tainability, and execution.

What is your organization’s ‘cre-ativity quotient?’ – A hands-onpracticum for enhancing creativity andcritical thinking in the workplace thatfosters new perspectives and habits ofthinking.

Employee EngagementEngagement is much more than attrac-tion, retention, or commitment. Engagedemployees are passionate about theirwork, proud of their organization, andare generally enthusiastic about comingto work each day. Engaged employeesare emotionally connected to their work,and are willing to ‘go the extra mile’ tobring success to the organization. Ahighly engaged and motivated work-force can reflect the company’s core val-ues, which ultimately strengthens theoverall company brand.Aspects of Employee EngagementThere are three basic aspects of em-ployee engagement according to theglobal studies:

1. The employees and their ownunique psychological makeup andexperience

2. The employers and their ability tocreate the conditions that promoteemployee engagement


3. Interaction between employees at alllevels

Thus it is largely the organization’s re-sponsibility to create an environment andculture conducive to this partnership, anda win-win equation.

Employees are most effective atwork when their strongest personal traitsare engaged. They also need to discovertheir most favorable ways of functioningat workplace. Another critical factor, sub-ordinate-supervisor relationship, is alsolinked to employee development. Abil-ity to effectively cope with stress is an-other important factor. There are someassessments that can help managers tounderstand the abilities of their employ-ees, their preferred work style, and howto motivate and how to develop their po-tentials. The ultimate benefit to individu-als completing the assessment as well asthe managers is learning the ways to bemore effective, efficient, and fulfilled atwork. Employees become more engagedwhen expectations between employeesand employers are aligned, this balance isoften found through the creation of anemployee value proposition. An em-ployee value proposition is the mutualexpectations and promises that areagreed on from both the sides.

How to Improve Employee Engage-mentEngaged employees are not naturallyborn, but can be developed by organiza-tional support and best practices. It is im-portant to have engagement methodsaligned with employee value proposi-tions. Organizations that believe in in-creasing employee engagement levelsfocus on:

Culture: It consists of a foundation ofleadership, vision, values, effective com-munication, a strategic plan, and HRpolicies that are focused on the em-ployee.

Continuous Reinforcement of People-Focused Policies:Continuous reinforce-ment exists when senior management

provides the staff with the budgets andresources to accomplish their work andempowers them.

Organizational Performance: It ulti-mately leads to high levels of trust, pride,satisfaction, success, and believe it or not,fun.

Increasing Employee engagement� Provide a variety of challenging op-

portunities that stimulate the em-ployees’ creative quotient: Tedious,repetitive, mundane tasks can causeburn out and boredom over time. Ifthe job requires repetitive tasks, lookfor ways to introduce variety by ro-tating duties, areas of responsibility,delivery of service, and so on.

� Conduct periodic meetings with em-ployees to communicate good news,challenges, and easy-to-understandcompany financial information.Managers and supervisors should becomfortable communicating withtheir staff, and able to give and re-ceive constructive feedback.

� Indulge in employee re-deploymentif he feels he is not on the right job.Provide an open environment.

� Communicate openly and clearlyabout what’s expected of employeesat every level - your vision, priorities,success measures.

� Get to know the employees’ interests,goals, their stress factors, show an in-terest in their well-being, and dowhat it takes to enable them to feelmore fulfilled and better balanced inwork and life.

� Celebrate individual, team, and orga-nizational successes. Catch the em-ployees doing something right, andsay ‘thank you’.

� Be consistent in your support for en-gagement initiatives. If you start oneand then drop it, your efforts maybackfire. There’s a strong connectionbetween the employees’ commit-ment to an initiative and the manage-ment’s commitment to supporting it.

FootnoteWorker effectiveness measurements arebased on human behavior, these metricsare intangibles and measure issues suchas fostering innovation, enhancing com-munication, encouraging learning, im-proving work process, expeditingdecision making, understanding and ad-dressing the needs of employees, and at-tracting and retaining talented workforce.An organization’s capacity to manageemployee engagement is closely relatedto its ability to achieve high performancelevels and superior business results.

Some of the advantages of engagedemployees are� Engaged employees will stay with

the company, be advocates of thecompany and its products and serv-ices, and contribute to bottomlinebusiness success.

� They will normally perform betterand are more motivated.

� They form an emotional connectionwith the company. This impacts theirattitude towards the company’sclients and thereby improves cus-tomer satisfaction and service levels

� It builds passion, commitment, andalignment with the organization’sstrategies and goals

� Increases employees’ trust in the or-ganization

� Creates a sense of loyalty in a com-petitive environment

� Provides a high energy working en-vironment

� Boosts business growth� Makes the employees effective brand

ambassadors of the company si

Fostering employee engagement is theability to guide indi-viduals and teams totheir highest level of collaboration, innovation, and effectiveness

Fostering Productivity and Organizational Effectiveness Via

Employee Engagement

MMaannaaggeemmeenntt:: By Nanda RamanujamThe author is Sr. Project Manager, Axentis Software


Identify a need and fill it is thebusiness mantra today. It callsfor a certain ability to understandrequirements and match thestandards of produce for the cus-

tomer. The measure product require-ment in the market, people orientationmust be properly scaled and a study ofinclination to buy the product at rea-sonable costs must be made. Researchon its utility, acceptance, weaknesses,and competition must be identified andpractically addressed.

tTwo kinds of people cohabit theworld of business. The normal businesspsyche markedly differs from the em-ployee mindset. Employees are con-cerned with career, position, increment,and a good take home salary; and they

do not go beyond. Ambitions are lim-ited and have boundary lines.

The business oriented people have apattern of interests and the manifold vi-sion and mission seem to be superior inthe thought process and functioningstyle. One with the orientation of busi-ness not only thinks of money, but histhoughts extend beyond personalgrowth. The strategy is to live withgood employees, build higher infra-structure, produce a superior product

line, win competition, and finally be thebackbone of the country’s sustainedeconomics.

Entrepreneurship invariably has asense of independence culminating intoa desire; a desire to achieve in spite ofobstacles and constraints, constantlydesiring to be successful. With thiscomes a state of mind, which becomesstrong with every passing day. This de-sire will sustain all hardships.

The first generation entrepreneursare those who will have crossroads ofanxieties, personal dilemmas, and con-flicting ideas of birth and death of busi-ness models. They have the real spiritof adventure and a diehard attitude.Some succeed and continue to win,while some meet with an untimely end.

The success and failure in businessalthough is very transient, the qualitiesand personal markings that an entre-preneur must cultivate are imminent,and let us examine them.

Attributes: Doing business does notmean that one has to be equipped withhigh qualifications. Qualities of ag-gressiveness, social exposure, network-ing, street smartness, ability to graspthings quickly, being good at mental

mathematics, and the ability to thinklaterally and find solutions are the mostimportant hallmarks of intelligence thatare required to become successful inbusiness. Above all, a person must havemarketing abilities.

Attitudes: Patience and perseveranceare essential attributes in doing busi-ness, the ability to compromise whenthings are down and striving for better-ment in future are qualities of merit.Scaling down or scaling up are strategicdecisions and are not stagnantprocesses confined to boundaries ofmanagement.

Business Ethics: Business ethics andvalue systems need to be in place, with-out which the foundations will becomeweak over a period of time. An organi-zation with staunch value systems andpractices would certainly consolidateits brand image and brand equity. Com-panies gain reputation by virtue of ag-grandizing customer faith and publicinterests, nurturing and cultivating bestbusiness practices.

Human Value Systems: A strongHRM is a deciding platform, or theroot, of any organization; it has tohave fair practices, be six sigma prin-ciple driven, and keep up ethical val-ues. Traditional companies have beenvery successful in consolidatinghuman resources as opposed to non-traditional companies, which, in the

name of innovation and rational ap-proach invite more trouble.

Crisis and Risk Management: Mini-mizing threats, maximizing benefits,and the ability to handle crisis in or-ganizations are other great attributes.Defining the problem or issue, lookingfor alternatives, methodology to resolvecrisis, freezing best alternatives, andimplementing orders conceived bythese efforts are basic requirements.Risk management should be valuedriven, an integral part of organiza-tional process, should lead to focusedelimination of uncertainties, and deci-sions need to be taken on the basis offactual information and be tailored.

Franchise Business OpportunitiesThe modern business opens up innu-merable opportunities for the discern-ing entrepreneur; one such opportunitycould be the franchise model. A suc-cessful business with established brandequity may offer franchise in selectedareas and in your location. Here, thebusiness model built is preconceivedand meditated to generate businessfrom day one of operations. All that onehas to do is to strictly follow the defineddisciplines and comply with internaland external mechanisms. There will bea detailed franchise orientation andproduct or service trainings, and onemust learn it from the roots.

Defined clientele and expectedROI, from familiar boundary lines arethe advantages in this model. Leverag-ing brand capitalization business edge,with no need for extra intelligence, theprincipal franchisor will have every-thing in place and one has to learneverything with patience and persever-ance.

The market survey, competitor ac-tivities, and tests and trials are all beingtaken care of by the franchisor. It’s withthis franchise model that good compa-nies garnish further growth and capi-talize markets. Name any FMCG brandtoday; they will have surely taken the

franchise business model for their mar-keting strategy.

In this scope and venue, young cap-

italists can take maximum opportunityto start a business, with the assuranceof guaranteed and measured businessoutlay and strategies.

MNC brands, who are onto thefranchise business model, will havevery defined structures in conductingtheir business, advertising strategies,marketing techniques, promotionalcampaigns, and events. Customerservices will be clearly defined andpracticed. Their training camps for ap-pointed franchisees comprise of all thefacets of business management. Inshort, franchise business being a time-tested and proven model can assuredlygenerate business, with the leastamount of efforts and low turnaroundtime. Quality assurance and supervi-sion will be slated at every stage of theproduct and best quality of product isguaranteed. Consumers will have as-sorted international brand choice andsatisfaction.

Sir M.Vishweshwaraiah once said‘Industrialize or perish’. He saw suchgreat need for India to become self suf-

ficient, and encouraged total industrialrevolution. Entrepreneurship does notrest at the doorsteps of businessmen butextends its benefits to a larger publicwelfare and society. It eases unemploy-ment in the country and creates newfrontiers of employment opportunities.

Jawaharlal Nehru contended oncesaying: As long as there are tears andsuffering, so long our work is not over.He advised us to sacrifice, focus our ef-forts, and to strive hard in removingpoverty and hunger.

India today is Asia’s fast growingdeveloped economy, advancing fasteron the global scenario to become asuper power. India's per capita income(an indicator of collective prosperity)is $1,124, ranked 139th in the world,while its per capita (PPP) of $3,176 isranked at 128th place. Previously aclosed economy, India's trade hasgrown fast in the past two decades.India currently accounts for 1.5 percentof world trade according to the WTO.After taking inflation into account, theper capita income is estimated to growby 5.4 percent to Rs. 33,540 this fiscalagainst Rs. 31,821 during 2008-09.Last fiscal, it grew by 5 percent.

The future of India lies with itsyoung, strong-willed entrepreneursand the spirit with which this com-munity takes off decides the futurestanding of this great nation. For theyoung and agile entrepreneurs multi-skilled and tailored entrepreneurshipdevelopment courses, distance learn-ing, and e-learning methodologies arenow open. si

Entrepreneurship does not rest at the doorsteps ofbusinessmen but extends its benefits to largerpublic welfare. It eases unemployment in thecountry and creates new frontiers of employmentopportunities

Scaling down or scaling up of a business arestrategic decisions and are not stagnant processesconfined to boundaries of management

&Entrepreneurship

Rewards

BBuussiinneessss:: By R.SubramanyaThe author is Associate Vice President, Educampus

IT spending across all indus-try markets in 2010 will in-crease up to 4.1 percent,exceeding $2.4 trillion. Asper the Gartner report, IT

spending in the banking andsecurities market will re-bound to $396.9 billion in2010, a 4.6 percent increase

from 2009.


ReStaggering Statistics:

In U.S., the Data Centers ac-counted for 61 billion kWh orapprox 1.5 percent of the Na-tion’s electricity consumption.This usage is equivalent to the

consumption of approximately 6million U.S. households with the es-timated figure of 12 percent increaseannually according to the study re-port from the EPA.

The report puts a tremendous re-sponsibility on the IT industry toadopt the Green IT initiatives moreseriously and make the IT infra-structure as ‘Eco-Friendly’ or ‘En-ergy Efficient’.

The EPA reports that energyusage in data centers doubled be-tween 2000 and 2006 and is pre-dicted to double again by 2011,hence the interest in energy effi-ciency.

Business leaders searching for agreen strategy encounter fewroadmaps and established rules andplenty of hidden twists and turns.

Emerging StandardsThe Energy Star Version 5.0 standardprovides guidance for choosing en-ergy-efficient equipment, includingNetwork devices, PC and Laptops,workstations, small-scale servers, andthin clients. To earn the Energy StarVersion 5.0 label, the computing de-vices must meet the set power con-sumption criteria.

The IT infrastructure managersand Technology Manufacturers look-ing for greener alternatives will beginto benefit this year from a major ini-tiative aimed at reducing the powerconsumed by Ethernet device- IEEE802.3az, or the Energy-Efficient Eth-ernet (EEE) standard, will implementlow-power idle (LPI) modes for thefull range of Ethernet BASE-T trans-ceivers (100Mb, 1GbE and 10GbE)and the backplane physical layer stan-dards (1GbE, 4-lane 1GbE and10GbE).

The Electronic Product Environ-mental Assessment Tool (EPEAT)goes further in providing guidance to

select environmentally friendly elec-tronic device or equipment. In additionto requiring Energy Star rating,EPEAT registration evaluates comput-ing device based on further criteria in-cluding materials selection andcomposition, life cycle considerations,end-of-life design and management,and packaging. EPEAT registers prod-ucts at Bronze, Silver, and Gold levelsaccording to how many of the optionalcriteria they meet on top of the 23 re-quired criteria.

Virtualization and Cloud clean theCarbon Virtualization, cloud computing, datacenter optimization and legacy modern-ization are the major focus areas for theIT organizations globally since the eco-nomic meltdown.

Cost savings and IT infrastructureconsolidation are driving the Green ITagenda at the moment. The shrinking ITbudget is also causing IT to reconsiderhow to run things more cost effectivelyas we continue to do more with less .

Virtualization clearly offers thepromise of better resource utilizationand lower operating expense. En-ergy-Star servers, outside air econo-mizers and the like offer true greenadvantages.

A recent survey of IT Managersworldwide about their environmentalstrategies indicates about 54 percentadmitted that cloud computing isnow part of their overall environ-mental strategy. And over 21percentof IT managers believe that cloudcomputing is a much greener alterna-tive to traditional computing infra-structures, but it seems that the vastmajority still remain to be convinced.

Green Client Computing – PowerSavior The benefits of efficient Client Com-puting through desktop virtualizationand print management creates signif-icant impact on the energy. LongerPC lifecycles and more efficientpower usage are other desktop virtu-alization benefits.

Hosted virtual desktops continue togarner significant market attention. Or-ganizations considering their deploy-ment can minimize cost and risks byfollowing implementation best prac-tices outlined by the industry experts.

Desktop Virtualization technol-ogy will help in extending the life-time of the Desktops by stretchingthe PC refresh cycle to reduce theload on already overtaxed landfills.Avoid sending hazardous materialsto those landfills, old systems andsupplies can be reused, repurposed,and/or recycled.

Green Client Computing is acombination of strategies and initia-tives that reduce the environmentalfootprint of IT infrastructure. Thisarises from reductions in energy useand consumables, including hard-ware, power, and paper and extend-ing the equipments lifetime—among others. Because of thesereductions, Green IT initiatives alsoproduce cost savings in energy use,purchases, management and sup-port, in addition to environmentalbenefits. Beyond cost savings andenvironmental benefits, some initia-tives may address stakeholder andregulatory needs and demands.

Green Journey Green computing is a continuousjourney and everyone is responsibleto play their role to make computing‘greener’ with the optimized energyusage to operate the electronic de-

vices and mushrooming professionalgadgets at work place. Such prac-tices include the implementation ofenergy-efficient Servers and Acces-sories or Peripherals as well as re-duced resource consumption andproper disposal of electronic waste(e-waste).

Green IT is taking on a biggerrole for many reasons, including anincreased awareness of environmen-tal danger; concern about powerbills; regulatory requirements; gov-ernment procurement rules; and asense that corporations should em-brace social responsibility.

Since IT is still responsible for2% of all carbon releases, IT man-agers should put best practices inplace to � Optimize the Power usage with

the proper Power Managementsoftware

� Actively manage the desktop orlaptop power settings

� Modernize the Data Center byVirtualizing the Servers, Desk-tops and Applications

� Mandate the purchase of energyefficient computing devices

� Establishes energy measurementand take the responsibility tomonitor the energy usage

Remember to Reduce ... Reuse...Recycle... si

The Emergence of Eco-Friendly Computing

duceusecycle

TTeecchhnnoollooggyy:: By Shiv KumarThe author is Executive Vice-President, Business Development,Zylog Systems


Today we’re in an era oftechnology-driven trans-formation. That meansyou can attain higher prof-its when you use technol-

ogy to redefine your products, yourservices, and/or how the industry ingeneral works.

Unfortunately, most companies areusing technology only one way – tolower costs and become more effi-cient. They view technology as a wayto “do more with less,” “streamline theworkflow,” and “trim expenses.”Sound familiar?

While that is certainly one good useof technology, you can also use it to re-define the marketplace as well as yourproducts and services. In this case,technology becomes a tool of creation.You can create new products, new serv-ices, and entire new markets, whichthen creates new jobs and careers.

Why is this important? Currentlythe United States is digging out of theworst recession since the 1930s, andthe global economy is suffering its

worst setback in decades. The key torecovering is all about jobs and how tocreate them. You don’t create jobs byincreasing productivity; you createjobs by creating new products, serv-ices, and markets. So even though wehave a statistical recovery, we have ahuman recession. As such, recoverycan’t be jobless.

The bottom line is that we can usetechnology to eliminate jobs or createthem. It’s time for businesses to focuson redefining as a tool for job creation.If you’re ready to start redefining yourcompany so you can grow your busi-ness and stay profitable as you createjobs for years to come, consider the fol-lowing guidelines.

Know Where You’re Going Look at your product, service, or in-dustry and see how you can use tech-nology to redefine it. The classicexample is Amazon.com. When theyfirst started the business, they usedtechnology to redefine how people sellbooks. But they didn’t stop there. They

then expanded to other products andredefined how nearly everything issold. Then they redefined again. Theydeveloped a large IT, logistics, andwarehouse system and they now rentout their enterprise IT platform andwarehousing space to other compa-nies. So they are not only redefiningan industry; they’re also redefiningthemselves.

Another example is Apple. Back inearly 2000, before they launched theiPod and iPhone, most people thoughtApple was quickly going out of busi-ness. That’s when the company rede-fined themselves around music. Laterthey redefined again with the iPhone,which is telecommunications. Nowthey’re doing it again with the iPad,which will launch another revolutionas they redefine ebook readers andmedia players. Like Amazon.com,Apple has redefined themselves aswell as their industry.

So when it comes to your companyand your industry, ask yourself somekey questions, such as:

� What is growing and what isshrinking?

� Where is the direction of the fu-ture going based on technology?(For example, getting more en-ergy efficient and going green areboth long-term trends. Virtualmarketing and social networkingalso represent long-term trends.)

� Based on where your customersand your industry are going, isthere a way to use technology tocreate new opportunities?

Understand How Technology is Af-fecting Your CustomersLook at how technology is affectingyour customers in your industryright now. But don’t just look at pro-ductivity. Look at the overall cus-tomer experience as well as who isbuying your offerings. For example,in the late 1970s, when ultra lightaviation was born, the first ultra lightaircrafts were basically hang-gliderswith engines. The FAA decided, dueto the size and weight of the plane,people didn’t need a pilot’s licenseto fly an ultra light aircraft. As a re-sult, the first ultra light manufactur-ers targeted that demographic –people who wanted to fly but whodidn’t have the time or money to geta pilot’s license. One company, Ul-traSports, thought they could attracta better customer, so they asked,“Why not redefine the product, thecustomer, and the market?”

Rather than target those whowanted to fly but didn’t have a li-cense or the income to afford buyingan aircraft, UltraSports decided totarget commercial jet pilots and flightinstructors for their ultra light air-crafts. After all, these pilots were thebest pilots, they loved to fly and theyhad money; however, because oftheir jobs, flying had become moreautomated and less fun. Then Ultra-Sports went one step further and re-defined the ultra light aircraft itselfby adding a stick and rudder and in-

strument controls. They made theultra light fly like an airplane ratherthan a hang-glider, which better ap-pealed to their new target market. Ul-traSports went on to become anational leader in their first year, allbecause they redefined who their

customer was and then made productchanges accordingly.

So when it comes to your cus-tomers, ask yourself some key ques-tions, such as:� Is there a better customer? For ex-

ample, maybe you’re selling to acustomer who can only affordlow-margin products and serv-ices.

� Who is your ideal customer? � Is there a customer you don’t

have but should have? � Could you redefine your product

and attract that customer?� Is there a way to use technology

to enhance your product or serv-ice in some way that opens up amarket or creates a new marketfor you…and thus new jobs?

Take Competition SeriouslyLook at the specific ways in whichyou compete in the marketplace aswell as what makes you unique. Thendecide how technology can redefinethe way you compete. For example,when was the last time you boughtsomething from the Polaroid Com-pany? At one time, they were theking of instant photography. But thentechnology and digital photographychanged their industry, and the waythey competed (instant photography)changed…but Polaroid didn’t change

with it. Instead, they made the mis-take many businesses do: they usedtechnology to get more efficient andlower their costs.

Similarly, the Kodak Companywas failing for over a decade. Finally,they looked at how they competed in

the past as well as whatit would take to competein the future. That’swhen they embraceddigital photography.And while they stillhave some traditionalfilm labs across thecountry, it’s their digitalproducts division that’s

profitable today. The moral: Thelonger you wait to redefine how youcompete, the harder it is to survive.However, when you pinpoint a wayto use technology to create new prod-ucts and services, you add new rev-enue streams and new jobs.

So when it comes to competing ina technology-driven age, ask yourselfsome key questions, such as:� Is there a way you can use tech-

nology to redefine how you com-pete?

� Is there a way you can use tech-nology to change your product orhow you service people?

� Is there a way you can use tech-nology to redefine your cus-tomer’s experience?

A (Re)Defining MomentStaying ahead during a technology-driven transformation is indeed pos-sible. It’s all about looking at whereyour customers are going rather thanwhere they have been. It’s aboutlooking at where technology isevolving and how it is shaping themarket, not where it used to be.When you ask the right questions andtake action on what the answers re-veal, you can use technology to rede-fine your company, create new jobs,and experience higher profits thanever before. si

How to Use Technology to Redefine

EconomyToday’s

We can use technology toeliminate jobs or createthem. It’s time for businessesto focus on redefining as atool for job creation.

TTeecchhnnoollooggyy:: By Daniel BurrusThe author is Technology forecasters and business strategists


It is often said that recession iswhere the opportunity is. Theeconomic downturn of last yearmay have been a big blow to themajority of businesses, but the

bright side is that it has paved the wayfor CXOs and entrepreneurs alike toscout for new avenues both in businessand technology. But the biggest chal-lenge lies ahead of the CIOs to strike abalance between the business growthand maximum utilization of availableresources. Sanjay Lall, VP and CIO,SimplexGrinnell is excited at what liesahead. SimplexGrinnell is provider ofaccess control, security, CCTV, firealarm, audiovisual, and PBX teleph-ony with worldwide installation andservice facilities.

“The last two years have been ex-tremely challenging for every CIO inthe industry. While there was the

need to have a constraint over one’sresources, the business had to keepon growing. It was important tomaintain the interests of the stock-holders and have consistent numberson Wall Street Journal quarterly,” ex-plains Lall.

Today, with a reasonably stablemarket and with many new develop-ments in the area of cloud computingand virtualization that offer a myriadof services at low cost, it is the idealscenario for him to set processes forthe company. With the data securitynow possible on ‘cloud’, he believesthat IT is moving in the right direc-tion - commoditizing the technologypartners. As information technologyshifts from being a standalone prod-uct to shared services, it’s time CIOsfocused on using IT to improve cus-tomer service.

“With the social media gatheringtraction, there is a boom in theamount of information availableover the Internet. It is time, we fo-cused on analyzing all the data andutilizing intelligent solutions likecloud computing and virtualizationto make the customer experience su-perior,” says Lall.

This can be easily achieved bycapturing all the knowledge that isout there and productively converg-ing social networking and making

the employees better informed. Butat the same time one ought to keep inregard the security at data and net-work level. In all, IT will become thebroker in every endeavor a businesswants to partake.

Today, Lall is busy building a teamthat is focused on the needs of thebusiness. He is looking at IT as the keyenabler for putting SimplexGrinnell atthe pinnacle of market growth by cut-ting costs and leveraging the com-pany’s business. His goal for the nextfive years is making SimplexGrinnellthe undisputed leader in its marketsegment so that it is renowned glob-ally. For this his first step is to developoperational products that converge IPwith standalone devices; so that he candrive technology to optimize infra-structure and aid in business improve-ment while lowering the costs.

The strategic minded CIO, withover 20 years of varied global IT ex-perience, has been wielding the helmat SimplexGrinnell for the last fouryears. As one who wanted to create atechnology oriented career, he startedout as technology developer at Coca-Cola. But the ten year stint he had atthe company cleared his vision.Though he was working on IT, he wasstill working for a company that wasin consumer oriented business. It wasthen that he realized that he did notwant to get caught up in technologyfor technology’s sake. It is vital thatone understands the dynamics of thebusiness one is working for; and hechanged track from a career in tech-nology to management. In the pastyears Lall has had leadership stints atseveral billion-dollar companies in-cluding Steris Corporation, SuntoryWater Group, General Motors, Gen-eral Electric, GTE, and Coca-Cola. Inan effort to round up his experience,he also served as VP, Operations atChutney Technologies, a startup, fornine years.

To him, it is important to learnfrom one’s peers in the industry. “It is

important to be aware of what is hap-pening in the industry adjacent to you.You may be surprised at how you mayabsorb some of their processes withinyour own organization and benefitfrom it,” he says. Some of the compa-nies he looks up at are UPS and Amer-ican Express who have created a fineimprint when it comes to customer ori-ented services. “I am looking at ap-plying collaboration of technologiesand using the analytics intelligence toleverage our customer’s experiencewith us. This is something I havelearnt from my peers,” he explains.

A high performance leader, Lallenjoys nurturing the people workingunder him. He ensures building astrong team that can step into his roleat any given time. This requires inter-est honesty, transparency, and leadingby example, he believes.

Looking back, he is happy atwhat he has achieved and extremelyvalues his stint at a startup. He be-lieves that one must always try beingan entrepreneur at least once in hislifetime, for it is then that one trulyunderstands and learns the impor-tance and useful utilization of time,capital, and resources. The startup heworked for provided services in theinfrastructure space. “We developedsoftware for data caching that helpedoptimize the infrastructure of an or-ganization. The best lesson I learntthere is that whenever you ask a cus-tomer to pay for something you en-sure that it is of value to him.Customers never invest where theysee only a little value, so one must al-ways keep a self check on one’s busi-ness,” Lall fondly reminisces.

To his peers and entrepreneurs hehas a simple thought. One ought tohave a positive outlook as the path tosuccess is never straight. Be ready totake risks but always have belief inone’s decisions. If in dilemma, seeka mentor, discuss every turn, andmore importantly be open to criticalfeedback. si

Social Media ConvergenceKey Enabler of CustomerOriented Service in Future

Be aware of whatis happening inthe industry adjacent to you;you may be surprised at howyou may absorbsome of theirprocesses withinyour own organization andbenefit from it

CCIIOO PPrrooffiillee:: By Vimali Swamy

One must trybeing an entrepreneur atleast once in hislifetime, for it isthen that onetruly understandsand learns theimportance anduseful utilizationof time, capital,and resources

Sanjay Lall


Bloghttp://blogs.siliconindia.com/

http://blogs.siliconindia.com/Manan/India_to_INDIA_The_Pokhran_way-bid-6t8WwO5F62014998.html

The historic day of 11 May 1998saw India testing its nuclearweapons for the second time

(the first time was in May 1974). Andagain on 13 May 1998 two more testswere held. These tests made every In-dian proud. Now India is a nuclearsuper power. Now we are secured thatno country in the world that has nu-clear weapons will dare attack India.Every Indian was happy. But at thesame time world fraternity was aghastat the thought that even India had ac-quired nuclear missile. The US andthe European nations condemnedthese tests as their monopoly on de-veloping nuclear weapons broke.They broke relationships with India.We were in a fizzy condition as wehad started developing the economyin the same 1990s and in a few yearssuch a big problem had to be faced.All economists who had predictedthat India will not sustain its growthand economy began loosing. Everycoin has two sides and they saw onlyone side of the coin, while the otherside was as shining as the sun.

In the year 1947 India got its in-dependence and then we started anew chapter towards prosperity. Butduring those early years Indian econ-omy was not doing well as India wasa secular nation with socialist think-

ing. We never thought that globaliza-tion will help India to earn respecteconomically. In the early 1990s weopened up our economy and steppedtowards globalization. But after 1998,when the powerful countries re-stricted their business with India, In-dian economy started to look beyondthese countries. India developed verygood bilateral relations with China.Currently, China is India's secondlargest business partner. India helpedthe African nations and developedand maintained good relations withthem. Because of the restriction inbusiness from powerful countries,India looked beyond them andearned a lot of respect from thesecountries in business and foreignpolicy matters. This made India in-dependent in economy and relievedit from the restrictions of these pow-erful countries. This showed the wayto other small countries that if bigand powerful nations are not takingnote of you look for alternatives,make your economy strong by en-couraging students to go for furtherstudies, encourage researchers, en-courage entrepreneurs, and take yourcountry onto a next level.

World noticed India's progress.India encouraged its entrepreneurs andthey started manufacturing products

which were seldom manufactured inIndia before. And then came the ITrevolution. Information technologybrought India on the map of develop-ing nations of the world. Today Indiais an IT hub and Bangalore became abig IT hub. Even Oxford Dictionarytook note of Bangalore and added aword 'Bangalored' in their new Dic-tionary. During these years worldbegan looking at India not as a countrybut as a developing super power. Thisis not because of the IT revolution orpopulation growth or share market butbecause of its strength to believe in itsability as a country, its people andtheir foresightedness to look beyondsomething. And all this happened be-cause of Pokhran nuclear tests. Thatday India was proud and the next dayworld condemned the nuclear testswhich were aimed at our own security.And then India started its free run to-wards development and today we feelproud that we are in this countrywhere you get a chance to think big.

The revolt of 1857 formed thebase for Indian political independ-ence; and the same way we can saynuclear tests are in the base ofIndia's economic independence.These tests helped us to find ourstrength and opportunities on whichwe can work on.

India to INDIAe Pokhran Way

Author: Manan BhattQuantitative Analyst, Geodesic Information Systems


siTech20

RANK COMPANY

Stock PriceINR Closing28.05.2010

52 WeekHIGH

52 WeekLOW

% CHANGE IN PRICE4 Weeks 52 Weeks

CAPITALIZATIONIn Rs. Crore

INDIA INDEXIndex of the top tech public companies in India

Infosys TechnologiesTata Consultancy ServicesWipro LtdHCL TechnologiesMphasis Mahindra Satyam Tech MahindraPatni CompFinancial TechnologiesGTL LtdRolta IndiaHCL InfosystemsMindtreeCMC LtdPolaris SoftwareMoser BaerNIIT LtdSonata SoftwareSasken Communications TechnologySubex Systems

2698770691386661907705491525403186130640136118173695820563

207094363935273229986051018953432061896411320181115783516296

1040358197871386205943821873263181257254014133519

-3-7-441-6-15-3-6-15-4314-215-4182

882811920720489143265129591484111016719512161198202128

15501215094110117426194138721062194197086702038703000284725142060179012261138611556365

1234567891011121314151617181920

RANK COMPANY

Stock Price(US$)Closing05.28.2010

52 WeekHIGH

52 WeekLOW

% CHANGE IN PRICE4 Weeks 52 Weeks

CAPITALIZATIONIn $ Millions

U.S INDEXIndex of the top tech public companies in U.S foundedand managed by Indians

Cognizant Tech. Juniper NetworksSanDisk CorporationMicrochip TechQlogic CorporationTibco SoftwareSyntelCavium NetworksAruba NetworksInfinera CorporationNetezzaIsilon SystemsiGateIxiaNetScoutSycamore NetworksOSI SystemsEXL Service holdings Magma DesignKeynote Systems

512942302111372913101413121015202616412

4929323021105025121112711816373319312

1712820941782652246214617

0-520457-5204175562364-1-12-9361

120401823559783511319418704082308080589478117353

15320152509590547024201880153012701190938850845674645637564469468187168

1234567891011121314151617181920

CTSHJNPRSNDKMCHPQLGCTIBXSYNTCAVMARUNINFNNZISLNIGTEXXIANTCTSCMROSISEXLSLAVAKEYN

31

2

30 Job Fairs

10000+ IT Professionals

200+ Companies

If you are looking for challenging opportunity in Indiathis is an event you shouldn’t be missing out.

VenueBiltmore Hotel and Suites

2151 Laurelwood Road, Santa Clara , CA 95054Time 6pm - 9pm

Exciting career opportunities awaits you in India.

Some of the recruiting companies:

www.siliconindia.com/eventsOr call us at: 510.440.8249

24

June 2010^24

Job Fair

Register now, FREE of cost at our web site.

Companies interested to recruit at this event can write to [email protected] or call 510.44.8249

Documents

Silicon India