Local focus helps IT companies sustain growth 
February 9, 2010
Source:  ET Bureau

India-centric IT vendors seem to be finally reaping the benefits of their strategy to focus on domestic opportunities, considering the buoyancy in local IT spends. In contrast, IT players, who for long targeted principally overseas markets, are still awaiting a revival in global demand.

The Indian market for IT solutions has continued to expand in FY10 as a slump in global IT spends. Industry body Nasscom has estimated a growth of 12% in the local market for FY10. On the other hand, global IT demand fell 4.6% in 2009, according to technology research firm Gartner. The trend is also visible in the performance of IT firms in the first nine months of FY10. Most IT players that earn more than half of their revenues from the domestic market have staged an impressive performance.

Some like systems integrator Allied Digital, OnMobile that offers software platforms to mobile value services, education software players Educomp Solutions and Core Projects, and Spanco that provides IT infrastructure and BPO services to the telecom sector have reported double-digit growth in revenues and operating profits during the three quarters ended December 2009 when reckoned year-on-year.

The India growth angle emerges more vividly in the case of Wipro. While its IT export revenue grew 5% during the nine months, products revenue that mainly includes its domestic activities rose by 14%. Operating profit growth was 18% and 36% in two segments, respectively.

However, not all IT companies with a local focus have done well. HCL Infosystems and Rolta, for instance, failed to report significant growth in sales and operating profits during the first nine months of FY10. This draws attention to the fact that local companies with a focus on domestic telecom, education and financial sectors did well given the buoyancy in these sectors.

Going ahead, these sectors could benefit from various government initiatives such as education for all, financial inclusion, mobile banking and the launch of 3G telecom services.

Nasscom expects domestic IT revenue to grow at a faster pace of 15-17% in FY 2011. This also means that local IT players are likely to maintain their fast pace of growth. Further, Nasscom anticipates a recovery in global demand as well, which may see a growth of 13-15% in IT exports.

It is, however, too early to hope for a recovery in IT exports since experts point to the possibility of another deeper recession in the US and European economies.

TCS falls prey to cyber attack
February 9, 2010
SOURCE : ET Bureau

MUMBAI/KOLKATA: India’s biggest software exporter Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) became a victim of cyber attack on Sunday, after the company’s website was hacked and the domain name was put up for sale.

While in the recent past, hackers have attacked top government websites, including telecom regulator’s trai.gov.in, this is the first time a large IT company’s website has been hacked.

The company’s official website www.tcs.com displayed the message ‘this domain name is for sale’ for nearly three hours, before the portal was restored by around 7 am.

When contacted by ET, a TCS spokesman said the attacks happened at the domain name registrar’s end, which is Network Solutions in this case. Network Solutions is one of the top five domain name registrars on internet, managing almost 6.4 million domains.

“The TCS website www.tcs.com was disrupted. Subsequently, it has been restored and is functioning fine. None of the servers were compromised. Initial investigation reveals a DNS redirection at the domain name registrar’s end. Further investigations are on,” said a TCS spokesperson.

A denial of service attack makes a website or a computer unavailable for target users, traditionally aimed at high-profile banks, credit card companies, government portals and other corporates.

By hacking a domain name, hackers are able to redirect users of the website to a completely unrelated IP address, primarily for the purpose of phishing.

When one types the name of a website on the address bar, it travels to a domain name server (DNS) where it is looked up for the IP address that comprises of sets of numbers. This server then redirects it to the right server where the pages reside. These servers are similar to a directory which redirects all users to the right server where web pages reside.

Such denial of service could have been possible due to two-three reasons, the DNS server could have been attacked/ hacked or the cache was hijaked, taking advantage of some loopholes in the system.

AB Minacs buys tech solutions firm Radifinity
February 9, 2010
SOURCE: ET Bureau

BANGALORE: Aditya Birla Minacs, the BPO company and part of the AV Birla Group, has acquired the Bangalore-based technology solutions provider Radifinity.

The two-year old company, incubated at the NS Raghavan Centre for Entrepreneurial Learning (NSRCEL ), IIM-Bangalore , provides technology solutions in areas such as radio frequency identification, smart cards, GPS and GPRS. The value of the acquisition could not be ascertained.

A spokesperson for Aditya Birla Minacs in an e-mail response said: “We have not acquired Radifinity. However , as part of our ongoing focus on building our IT capabilities and talent base, Minacs has hired some key people from the company.” ET could not get any response from Radinfinity regarding this development.

Radifinity was founded by Jay Krishnan , Dhananjay Shukla, Subra Chandramouli , who were earlier working with companies such as Cisco, Juniper Networks, Nortel and Intel. According to sources, they would remain as promoters of the company, following the acquisition by Aditya Birla Minacs, and would operate as a separate entity.