IBM-NID tie-up for more user-friendly mobiles 
March 11, 2010
Source:  IANS

GANDHINAGAR: Technology multinational IBM has tied up with the National Institute of Design, Ahmedabad, and the Research Centre for Advanced Research and Technology of the Tokyo University to launch a new initiative to make mobile phones more user-friendly for the elderly, the illiterate and the semi-literate.

The mobile phone is today the most revolutionary communication medium that influences life and living. But except for basic voice communication, a large number of people are unable to benefit from the other services that this small, hand-held tool offers.

"The study will help identify the requirements of a vast majority of the population falling in these categories and then put enhanced services and facilities in their hands", said Manish Gupta, director, IBM research, India.

The initiative is part of the company's Open Collaborative Research programme that involves institutes of learning and the industry.

J. Khakhar, a faculty member at NID who is heading the project, said the initiative would impact the lives of the underprivileged.

Right strategic buyouts key for Infosys to stay ahead
March 11, 2010
SOURCE : ET Bureau

Is Infosys gradually losing out on its superiority in running a high quality, high margin business to its closest peers TCS and Wipro? The latest comparative analysis by ET Intelligence Group suggests that the IT company, co-founded by the legendary, NR Narayana Murthy, may have to revisit its policy of mostly organic growth.

The analysis compares revenues, operating profits and net profits of top four IT exporters publicly listed in India, including TCS, Infosys, Wipro, and HCL Technologies. Spanning across past 14 quarters, the analysis also attempts to asses how well the latter three have performed relative to TCS, which is the largest among all. To achieve this, the three operational parameters for TCS were set to the common factor of 100 and then the relative performance of the other three IT players was monitored.

The analysis shows that Infosys is gradually falling behind TCS in terms of both revenue and operating profit. For instance, Infy’s quarterly revenue was almost 80% of TCS in the December ’08 quarter. It had increased quite impressively from as low as 72% in the December ’07 quarter.

However, Infosys seems to have lost the tempo in subsequent quarters. During the three months ended December ’09, its revenue was just over 75% of TCS’. Another way to look at it is checking what happened to relative revenues of its peers. In the past three years, Wipro’s revenue relative to TCS has gradually increased from 59% to 67.5%. For HCL Tech, it rose from 30% to 40%.

This trend largely reflects growth strategies adopted by these companies. While TCS, Wipro and HCL Tech acquired companies during the period, Infosys largely relied on organic growth. But what can cause more concern is the fact that Infosys is also lagging in terms of operating profit despite its industry best margin record.

Between the March ’08 quarter and the December ’08 quarter, Infy’s operating profit was higher than that of TCS despite the fact that its revenue lagged behind TCS’. This reflected superior margins of Infy over TCS. However, here again, Infy is gradually

losing its dominance. From 113% a year ago, Infy’s operating profit relative to TCS has fallen to 89% in the December 2009 quarter. The situation is similar in the case of Wipro and HCL Tech.

It appears that TCS is at an advantage over its peers at least for now. It has regained leadership in absolute

operating profit while maintaining its lead in revenue generation. But Infy’s CFO V Balakrishnan thinks that such a comparison based on panel data (both time series and cross sectional data) may be difficult. “This is because there are lots of differences in accounting policies between companies, especially related to depreciation, amortisation of software, forex accounting, and provisions for receivables.”

However, in case of comparisons over multiple time periods, such differences tend to smoothen out. The question is whether Infosys feels the necessity to change its ‘mostly organic’ business model, given that its peers are aggressively pursuing inorganic expansion.

“It is not a question of organic versus inorganic growth. Both could hurt or help the revenue growth and profitability,” says Mr Balakrishnan. He emphasises that the game is all about doing the right strategic acquisition and executing it well. Infy has nearly

Rs 14,400 crore in liquid assets. Investors would be keen to see whether it would find a better way to spend this by taking a leaf from the strategy books of its peers.

Wipro to provide business productivity solutions
March 11, 2010
SOURCE: PTI

BANGALORE: Wipro Technologies, the global IT services business of Wipro Limited, on Tuesday announced that it has signed a Microsoft Business Productivity Online Suite (BPOS) "Dedicated Advisor" agreement with Microsoft Corp.

This agreement allows Wipro to advise and enable its global enterprise customers to migrate to the BPOS cloud services by provisioning a range of professional services from "go-live" assessments to full migration and solution implementation accelerators, a release said.

This suite is a set of cloud-based applications for enterprises, and includes Microsoft Exchange Online, Microsoft SharePoint Online, Microsoft Office Live Meeting, Microsoft Office Communications Online and Microsoft Forefront Online Protection for Exchange.

Customers can choose any or all of the products from the suite, which will provide enterprise ready collaboration, content management, messaging and directory platform services, along with advisory, migration and maintenance services, it said.