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GII: A group that tracks Indian cyberspace
June 09, 2008
Source: IANS
BANGALORE: Does India have too many "cyber law experts"? What's wrong with the Blackberry service in India? How is BSNL's IPO shaping up? These and several such issues routinely crop up on India-GII.
So what is India-GII? Located in cyberspace, it is a network of techies and others fleshing out cyber issues in the country, tracking its progress from one of the most expensive and monopolistic telecom markets to one of the most competitive.
India-GII describes itself as a "list (that) has existed since 1995".
"There were no real expectations we placed on this list," said IIT grad Arun Mehta - one of the list owners. "Other than to act as a forum to discuss matters important to us - the internet and everything around it in India."
Why the name?
Those days, Mehta recalled, concepts such as the NII (National Information Infrastructure) and its global counterpart, the GII, were brought into currency by former US vice president Al Gore.
"We needed a short name for the list, part of which needed to be India, and we could not come up with a better suffix to indicate what about India we were interested in... we are perhaps the last group keeping the GII name alive," Mehta said, with a smile.
Before India-GII came into existence and the internet wasn't as popular or available as today, Mehta and his ilk used the Bulletin Board Services to make late night calls to exchange notes.
That couldn't - and didn't - last long, and Mehta approached the CPSR (Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility) network, which helped out.
Today, the India-GII list (online at lists.cpsr.org/lists/info/india-gii), boasts of 352 subscribers - academics, bureaucrats, activists, journalists and, of course, techies - "people simply interested in India's telecommunications and Internet growth".
Mehta, co-owner along with techies Suresh Ramasubramanian, Udhay Shankar N and former editor and engineer VV Crishna, said at the time that the need for such a forum was very high, as mainstream media coverage of the subject was poor. "The quality was terrible, reflecting the poor knowledge among journalists."
That has been overcome; India-GII experts examine each issue critically, separate the hype from reality and spot errors in published material. Said Singapore-based member Dinesh: "In technology, there are quite a full team of experts here."
Dinesh said he wished "some serious networking plans were being put in place to help India, especially in the remote areas, where the network penetration is very small", and small ISPs begun, using Wimax and mesh technologies, to provide quality service based on open-source applications.
Perhaps, it may not remain a mere "wish" for long. As a result of "quality information" provided by India-GII members, action has often been taken at official levels, said the Delhi-based Mehta.
Helping matters are the several information and technology officials on the list, who circulate relevant information to ministry colleagues. "I would like to think this may have had some influence on policy, but of course there is no way to verify this," he said, looking back.
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IT cos revenue growth slowing
 June
09 ,2008
Source: REUTERS
BANGALORE: India's export-focused software and back-office services companies will see slower revenue growth of 25 per cent in the current fiscal year to March because of tighter technology spending, a lobby group said on Monday.
The sector's revenue is estimated to have risen 29 per cent to $64 billion in 2007/08, according to the National Association of Software and Service Companies (NASSCOM).
"You can't grow at the same rate when your customers are slowing down," said Ganesh Natarajan, chairman of Nasscom.
"People are a little wary to make commitments," he told reporters. Helped by an army of English-speaking workers and cheaper wages, India's software services firms such bellwether Infosys Technologies and No. 1 Tata Consultancy Services have thrived by winning deals from overseas clients.
But profit growth has slowed sharply in the last two quarters as a slowdown in the United States, which contributes more than half the revenue for Indian software firms, crimped outsourcing contracts. |
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MS may let `outsider` manage India ops
June 09, 2008
SOURCE: BS Reporters
Microsoft Corporation, the world's largest software company, may name an outsider to manage its Indian operations after Neelam Dhawan, the company's local managing director, quit on Friday, sources involved in the process said, declining to be identified.
The software developer may chose Dhawan's successor from a possible list of three candidates selected by Chairman Ravi Venkateshan, who is spearheading the search.
Microsoft may announce a successor in the next 15 days, sources said, noting that while Doug Hauer was elevated as chief operating officer (COO) of Microsoft India, the company would prefer someone with a deep understanding of the Indian market to replace Dhawan. Besides, Hauer has returned to the US. The company's spokesperson declined to comment
Dhawan's exit is the second high-profile departure this month - the first being that of Rajan Anandan, who will be returning to the US to pursue plans outside Dell. Sameer Garde would be its new country general manager.
The software behemoth is also searching candidates among overseas and local information technology companies, including IBM, HP, HCL Technologies and Wipro Technologies.
Candidates from non-IT fields may not be considered since the successor will need a deep understanding of the Indian hardware, software and e-governance segments. Besides, Venkateshan was from a non-IT background, a former Cummins India man.
Neelam Dhawan's exit from Microsoft comes amid India and three other countries' opposition to International Organisation for Standardisation's decision to declare software developers Office Open XML (OOXML) file format as an international standard.
The refusal from India to accept the standard could make it difficult for Microsoft to get government business since governments worldwide, including India, prefer standards and are wary of holding digital data in proprietary formats, which could make them hostage to a software vendor.
States, such as Kerala and others from the north-east, are heavy adopters of ODF file formats, which are open and free (excluding maintenance and support).
Microsoft's headcount in India, including its Hyderabad campus and Bangalore, is in excess of 5,000.
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