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Indian techies steal the show at global tech event
March 09, 2010
Source: ET Bureau
BANGALORE: It took him two years to perfect algorithms that allow rich content to be streamed on low bandwidth. But just 12 weeks into the commercial launch of the product VMukti, the Ahmedabad-based start-up co-founded by Hardik Sanghvi, has raked in eight enterprise customers. “These are the customers who have signed for 2-5 years contracts,” said Mr Sanghvi, who will use this product to beam e-learning content to remote learning centres primarily in Gujarat and Rajasthan.
On the first day of EmTech, the emerging technology conference hosted by Technology Review, published by Technology Review — an independent media company owned by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) — Mr Sanghvi emerged as one among 20 Indians below the age of 35, who were honoured for their innovations in fields ranging from biotechnology to the arts and entertainment, software development to semiconductors, transportation, energy and new materials research.
The two-day conference, traditionally held in the US, is being hosted in India for the second year in a row. And is primarily focused on showcasing technologies that will change the way we live and work in the future. Some of the innovations that were showcased include green computing techniques, clean transport alternatives and smarter energy grid to the role that wireless can play in connecting India.
“In the next year-and-a-half, about 800-million Indians will perhaps be able to access mobile phones across the country,” said professor Ashok Jhunjhunwala, Department of Electrical Engineering, IIT Madras and founder, Tenet Telecom, who addressed a session on Wireless India at the conference. He listed funds transfer on the mobile, which will power the financial inclusion goal, as the next biggest application for mobile phones in India, followed by the use of mobile phones to beam education content, deliver healthcare solutions and provide specific services to farmers.
“Micro-finance institutions were the first step in financial inclusion, mobile banking is the next step, said Mr Jhunjunwala, who feels the creation of call centres, which can answer specific queries on agriculture for farmers, is a model that will be rolled out across rural India in the near future.
“By 2013-2014, the largest contributor to India’s gross national product will be telecom,” said professor S Sadagopan, founder director IIIT, Bangalore, who said the use of landlines will continue to drop from the current level of 36 million users, as mobile connectivity increases countrywide.
Through the opening day researchers from the MIT Media Labs presented futuristic technologies that are designed to change the way humans access a host of services form healthcare to personal computing. In presenting his work on camera culture, that aims to build technology that mimics the process of the human eye, professor Ramesh Raskar, professor of Media Arts and Sciences, MIT Media Lab and co-director, Centre for Future Storytelling displayed a series of innovations in the field of visual computing.
“If the 80’s was about the processor, the 90’s about the network, then we are now in a time where people are the new computer,” said Mr Raskar, who heads the Camera Culture research group at the Lab.
In the TR35, India list were also awardees such as 28-year-old Rikin B Gandhi, founder of Digital Green, Bangalore, who was named the Social Innovator of the Year for finding a solution to help farmers adopt better farming techniques. The youngest innovator on the list, 23-year-old post-graduate student of IIT Kharagpur, Manoj Kumar Mandelia has developed a solution to deal with wastewater management, using it to generate electricity.
Ashish Bhat, 26-year-old, co-founder of Mumbai-based Ideaforge Technology, also a TR35 awardee won his prize for creating the world’s smallest and lightest autonomous unmanned aerial vehicle that can be used for anti-terrorist operations and counter-insurgency in forests.
The lone woman awardee, Indrani Medhi’s work in creating a text-free user interface for illiterate and semi-literate users, also found recognition on the TR 35 list.
In trying to push the boundaries of how a camera captures images, Prof Raskar and his team are focused on creating breakthroughs in medical applications. “I know light travels in straight lines, so we are breaking the laws of physics when we ask, can you see around the corner,” said Prof Raskar who feels a camera In the hands of over a billion people on earth will impact the socio-cultural fabric of society in the future. “User generated visual content will drive socio-political goals in future,” says Raskar who feels it is the task of the innovator to build solutions that will ensure that new technology is used for good and not misused.
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Microsoft unveils cloud-based operating system in India
March 09, 2010
Source: ET Bureau
NEW DELHI: The world’s largest software maker Microsoft on Monday made its cloud-based operating system commercially available for Indian users.
The computer power on Windows Azure, a cloud-based operating system hosted in Microsoft’s data centers, will be available at $0.12 on an hourly basis, while storage on Azure will cost enterprises $0.15 per GB on a monthly basis.
The web edition of its database service SQL Azure will be available at about $10 per month for up to 1 GB. The business edition of its database service will be priced at about $100 per month for up to 10 GB of database per month.
Rajan Anandan, managing director, Microsoft India, said: “All of our popular products are already cloud-ready, and we have a clear future roadmap to provide anytime, anywhere access across diverse devices spanning computer, mobile and Internet.”
The company claims to have over 3,000 applications developed from India that are currently hosted on the cloud platform. It already claims to have about 250 small and medium-sized customers in India. There are about 22,000 developers from India who are making applications on the Azure platform. Companies like Infosys, HCL Technologies, Persistent Software, Wings Info, Cerebrate and CDC Software are developing commercial applications and solutions on Windows Azure platform.
Microsoft’s estimates reveal that with the Windows Azure Platform, customers and partners can realise a reduction in Total Cost of Operations of key workloads by up to 30 to 40% over a three year period. The announcement makes Microsoft one of the few companies in India that is ready to offer cloud-based services across all three service layers in the cloud, including infrastructure, platform and software applications.
For software-as-a-service, Microsoft had launched Microsoft Online Services, Office Web Apps, Microsoft Hosted Dynamics, Office Communication online and SharePoint online in November last year. For infrastructure-as-a-service, Microsoft had launched its offerings via Reliance ADAG, Netmagic last year. The platform as a service stack was rolled out today as part of Windows Azure and SQL Azure launch.
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Microsoft India unveils new platform for shared IT services
March 09, 2010
Source: IANS
NEW DELHI: Global software giant Microsoft on Monday unveiled a portfolio of services in India that will help companies share software and storage facilities, called cloud computing, that can bring down their total IT spend by as much as 50 percent.
Windows Azure -- the company's latest offering in the area of cloud computing -- is now available commercially in India, said Microsoft India group Director Vikas Arora. "Some 3,500 applications for Azure have been developed out of India alone," Arora said.
In cloud computing, companies share computer resources -- such as servers, software and data storage -- through the internet, instead of setting up such infrastructure at their own end.
This kind of computing has become a smart way of doing businesses and such offerings are estimated to have generated about $45 billion in revenues for service providers in 2008, and is projected to soar to $150 billion by 2013.
"We are today in India across all the three layers of cloud -- infrastructure, platform or the set of services that are on offer," Arora said, adding cost is one of the key benefits for a company that opts for such services.
Both individuals and companies are already using cloud computing with services such as webmail and sharing of software and other applications. The concept is evolving into a simple, pay-per-use way to get services on tap, just like electricity, for businesses.
The cloud is also a green way to do business. Organisations don't need to set up server banks running lots of software -- just pay for what you use. The provider services many users from one set of equipment, halving energy and equipment cost per user.
According to Microsoft, companies have reported anywhere between 16-49 percent reduction in their total spend on information technology and related services over a three-year period after migrating to cloud computing.
The company has already launched several products and solutions in India in other layers of cloud computing as part of its overall strategy for enterprises, even as security of data by using such shared services continues to be a concern.
But Microsoft said it was aware of the issue and had strong data security protocol.
"Keeping the customers' confidence would be the key to further cloud computing. We have actually gone threadbare on all the aspects of data security. We got all our facilities specifically audited to meet the security standards," said Arora.
"A breach can happen anywhere in the pipeline. So, everybody involved needs to focus on best practices -- for coding and securing applications."
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