|
IT has given business a new life
July
05, 2008
Source: REUTERS
NEW DELHI: In the last two decades, information technology’s scope of involvement has widened in business ventures, driving a large number of business processes. In fact, across India Inc, companies are increasingly realising the importance of IT. By 2009, the enterprise spend on IT is expected to exceed $36 billion. Yet, a lot more needs to be done to increase IT penetration across large, medium and small enterprises.
Realising the role of IT in deriving high performance from enterprises, ET brought together top executives and experts from the industry at The Economic Times IT Intelligence Conclave 2008 held in New Delhi on Friday to encourage and explore opportunities for a competent integration of technology with business initiatives. Gartner was the knowledge partner for the conclave and Nasscom’s ex-president Kiran Karnik was the conference chairman.
IT has given India visibility on a global scale, taking development to the hinterlands and enabling expansion of skills development,” said Ashwini Kumar, minister of state for industry, in his keynote address to a select gathering of over 100 CIOs and business leaders. However, real growth is possible only if we can grow in manufacturing and agriculture, the minister added.
Mr Karnik noted the need for fostering a relationship between advanced technology developments and business modules for boosting efficiency and revenue performance of a company. “Advanced IT operations incorporated by a company give it a global face to stimulate competition,” he said. He emphasised the use of IT for enhancing top line performance and revenues of companies.
Partha Iyengar, regional research director, Gartner India, focussed on the need for chief information officers to assume leadership roles in the business. “CIOs need to move from being a risk to becoming a trusted ally of the CEO, involved in strategic decisions made by the company. CIOs must not merely be IT leaders but must also be responsible for key business functions,” he said.
A whole host of industry experts were among the speakers dwelling on the importance of IT in enterprises. These included Jai Menon, group CIO, Bharti Airtel, Manish Gupta, CIO, Fortis Healthcare, SB Roy, director, passenger services, Centre for Railways Information System and Sandeep Phanasgaonkar, president & CTO, Reliance Capital.
The conclave discussed a spectrum of topics including the use of IT for business transformation, issues surrounding business continuity, green IT and sustainability, security aspects of IT and how information can be transformed into a profitable asset.
|
 |
|
Cisco financing facility for SMBs
 July
05, 2008
Source: BL
Bangalore, July 4 Cisco, networking technology and products company, has announced a zero per cent financing facility for small and medium businesses for its multi-layer services programme, that will seek to tackle the challenges of the sector through cost control and investment in technologies and infrastructure.
The scheme, launched here this week, will be extended to China, Korea and Hong Kong and other APAC countries. It will initially be in force till 2009 and cover Cisco’s lifecycle approach of planning, designing and implementation for the SMBs. Cisco offers the products at a concessional interest rate of seven per cent to the SMBs.
The scheme devised by its finance arm Cisco Capital, a fully owned subsidiary of Cisco Systems, extends assistance to larger enterprises at market rate, said Mr Guatam Manish, Vice-President, Cisco Capital India. Cisco had invested $150 million in the arm set up in India in 2005, which is part of the $1-billion investment promise announced by Cisco Systems’ Chairman and CEO, Mr John Chambers.
Addressing a press conference here, Mr Manish said the scheme has not been devised to offset the possible impact of the economic downturn or slow down on technology spending or retain its customers from competitors. It was only a value proposition to the sector which would have easier and cheaper access to advanced technology, which was the key differentiator to help the sector enhance its business and competitiveness. |
|
|
Adobe Allows Google, Yahoo! to Search for Flash Files
July
05, 2008
Source: Google
Email thisCommentsRSSDigg thisDel.icio.usFlash-based content on the web is currently unavailable in search results as search engines are unable to extract content from flash files.
This inaccessibility to such content will now be history as Adobe is teaming up with Google and Yahoo! by providing optimized Adobe Flash Player technology to the search giants to enhance search engine indexing of the Flash file format, in effect improving search results by allowing them to search for flash-based content.
The openly published SWF specification describes the file format used to deliver rich applications and interactive content via Adobe Flash Player, which is installed on more than 98 percent of Internet-connected computers. Although search engines already index static text and links within SWF files, RIAs and dynamic Web content have been generally difficult to fully expose to search engines because of their changing states - a problem also inherent in other RIA technologies.
"Until now it has been extremely challenging to search the millions of RIAs and dynamic content on the Web, so we are leading the charge in improving search of content that runs in Adobe Flash Player," said David Wadhwani, general manager and vice president of the Platform Business Unit at Adobe. "We are initially working with Google and Yahoo! to significantly improve search of this rich content on the Web, and we intend to broaden the availability of this capability to benefit all content publishers, developers and end users."
Google has already begun to roll out Adobe Flash Player technology incorporated into its search engine.
Yahoo! also expects to deliver improved Web search capabilities for SWF applications in a future update to Yahoo! Search.
|
|
|
|
