TCS betting big on e-governance  
June 17, 2008
Source:  TNN

NEW DELHI: Betting big on e-governance, Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) is not only bullish on participating in such projects in India but is also looking at countries in the Middle East, Latin America, Eastern Europe and Africa. E-governance is pegged to be a $35-40 billion market worldwide. 

E-governance refers to use of electronic means for government’s interaction with citizens as well as businesses and for internal government operations. 

“India is one of the toughest markets to crack. Seeing our work here, a lot of countries are asking if we could do something similar for them. We are seeing traction in the Middle East, Africa, Eastern Europe and Latin America. We have received a significant order from the department of education in Austria and are also looking at south-east Asia,” said TCS vice-president and head of government solutions industry unit Tanmoy Chakrabarty. 

The Commonwealth countries, which have the same systems and practices inherited from the British, make for very attractive markets, he added. 

TCS had earlier implemented egovernance projects like the MCA 21 project with the corporate affairs ministry for digitisation and 100 per cent electronic filing system and the APOnline project for the Andhra Pradesh government that provides multiple services through kiosks. It also set up a data centre in Guwahati for administration of value-added tax (VAT) in five north eastern states. 

“The good news is that so little has been done,” Chakrabarty said. He points out the Indian Railways as an example. While online ticketing has seen a great response, there are still queues at the railway counters. “Not everyone has access to the Internet. In London, train tickets are sold at newspaper stalls. Why can’t we buy railway tickets at the nearest grocery store or bus stops?” he asks. 

TCS has held discussions with the railway ministry to provide solutions that could enable just that. It is also talking to municipal corporations and telecom operators for bill payment solutions to be installed at one’s residents’ welfare associations. 
The firm has suggested that users pay a small fee for the services rendered under such projects. 

Wipro sees revival in outsourcing biz     
June 17 , 2008 
SOURCE: REUTERS


BANGALORE: Wipro Ltd, India's No. 3 software services exporter, is seeing a revival in flow of outsourcing deals as the turmoil in the global financial industry eases a bit, joint chief executives of its IT business said. 

Still, Wipro is cautious about its prospects in the next two quarters and expects business to accelerate towards the end of the fiscal year ending in March, Girish Paranjpe and Suresh Vaswani said. 

"Relative to how it was in the first quarter of this (calendar) year, there was a feeling that things are almost frozen, I think things are beginning to come back to normal," Paranjpe said. 

"The good news is that there have been no casualties after Bear Sterns. Whatever management changes had to happen has taken place in many of the big companies." 

India's export-driven software services companies get the bulk of their revenue from banks and financial firms, sectors which have been battered by the turmoil in global financial markets. 

In April, Wipro, which offers IT solutions such as system integration, software application development and back-office services, reported its slowest quarterly earnings growth in about five years as its clients cut back on technology spending.

IBM to open-source DB2?     
June 17, 2008 
SOURCE: PDT

November 18, 2005 IBM is positive about the possibility of bringing out its DB2 database management software under an open-source license. 
While the computing giant has no immediate plans to open-source DB2, market conditions may make it unavoidable, according to Chris Livesey, IBM's U.K. director of information management software. 

"We have a light version of the product offered for free, which is a step towards exposing our core (DB2) technology," said Livesey. "Looking at IBM's heritage in contributing to the open-source market, we've been particularly keen to lead that market. Open source is an interesting space, as a whole. As the future unfolds, and the economics become clearer, there's going to be more commitment to open source by everybody. We've made good steps towards that." 

DB2 is widely used in IBM products globally. Livesey said next steps for the 25-year-old product include improving the interaction capabilities between DB2 and business intelligence (BI) products so queries can be managed in one place. 

"People with detailed queries currently extract the data (from DB2 databases) to use with BI," Livesey said. "They don't do it in the database itself because the (performance of the) database would be hit very hard." 

Customers increasingly have the desire to look for business analytics in one place and in real time, said Livesey, which means that IBM had to focus on maintaining the speed of DB2 transactions while enabling complex queries in the same environment. 

Current challenges faced by IT professionals tasked with managing data include the size and scale of data stores, Livesey said. 

"There's a huge data explosion which is increasing by orders of magnitude each year, which is having a major impact on storage and the guardians of data," Livesey said. 

"Look at the amount of information produced on the planet and the number of people trying to access it. We don't know when things are going to fall over." 

As a consequence, Livesey said IBM was also researching data compression technology, and privacy and security measures to safeguard data.