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In My Opinion: Pradeep Elankumaran, Intridea VC TALK: Mohanjit Jolly, DFJ India

PUBLISHED SINCE 1997

BUSINESS & TECHNOLOGY IN THE U.S. & INDIA JUNE - 2010 SILICONINDIA.COM

Deepak Khare
 siliconindia JUNE - 2010
Contents June2010
Editorial
Publisher
Harvi Sachar

I
16
3G: Will it Revamp the Face of India?

Caresoft
Editor-in-Chief
Pradeep Shankar
Managing Editor
n one of the popular temples in the U.S., a quote is engraved on
Cover Story
Christo Jacob
a pillar, “There are some things which Google cannot answer
you. So believe in God.” This reflects how profoundly Google
Playing
Deputy Editors
Jayakishore Bayadi Jaya Smitha Menon
has revolutionized the very face of the Internet since the 1990s. A
similar revolution is expected to happen with the recent 3G auction
in India that earned close to $15 billion to the Indian government.
Editorial Staff

to Win
Benny Thomas Eureka Bharali
How? Unlike before, when the mobile was a commodity of the upper
Roshna Sankar Sikta Samantaray
class individual, the scenario has completely changed today. In the
Vimali Swamy
past few years, the Indian and Chinese consumers have been leading
the growth in this sector – the number of mobile users in India is ex- By Christo Jacob
Raghu Koppal
pected to increase from 600 million to over 1 billion by 2014. More-
Sr.Visualizer
P Magendran
over, the increasing mobile broadband subscribers and data usage
Subscription Manager

has fuelled the spread of smartphone penetration from 11 percent to

17 percent in 2009.
But there may be a hitch. Despite the market looking rosy for the 06 [In My Opinion] 26 [Business] 36 [Business]
Mailing Address
3G spectrum auction winners, there are worries of the ‘winner’s Technological Prescience & Telecom Companies Revive Entrepreneurship Rewards
curse’ that plagued the UK’s 3G spectrum allocation in 2000, which Building Great Indian Products Value of the Indian Paisa By R.Subramanya, Educampus
SiliconIndia Inc raised $34 billion. During that time, the bidders ended up paying so By Pradeep Elankumaran, Intridea By Sanjit Chatterjee,
44790 S. Grimmer Blvd much for the license that they did not have funds to create the infra- REVE Systems 38 [Technology]
Suite 202, structure to support the rollout of the products and services. Hope- 08 [Infocus] The Emergence of
Fremont, CA 94538 fully there is no repeat of the disaster in the current bid in India where 28 [Business] Eco-Friendly Computing
telecom players have paid 10 times the amount they paid for 2G li- HR Meets Technology Asking
censes just two years ago. Moreover, no single company has won a
13 [VC Chakra] Reduce Reuse Recycle
T:510.440.8249, F:510.440.8276 Infineta Systems Closes the Right Questions By Shiv Kumar, Zylog Systems
bid in all circles.
Hence, striking a balance between making 3G affordable to pre- $15 million Series A Funding By Sanjay Sathe, RiseSmart
mium customers and upgrading their instruments, providing the data- Axtria Closes $2.5 million Se- 40 How to Use Technology to
rich 3G service through their own service providers in respective ries A Funding 30 [Technology] Redefine Today’s Economy
cities will be a major challenge for these players, especially when Preventive Healthcare By Daniel Burrus
siliconindia the BSNL and MTNL have already set the rules of the game some Through Social Networking
14 [CEO Spotlight]
42 [CIO Profile]
June 2010, volume 13-06 (ISSN 1091-9503)
months back. A bright spot for the telco service providers at a time BySubhash K Parameswaran,
Published monthly by siliconindia, Inc.
Enterprise Social Software A
like this is the fact that the Indian mobile industry is ready with hand- UST Global Social Media Convergence
sets and supporting infrastructure. Trend that Needs to be Tapped on
Key Enabler of Customer
The only concern for these winners is to play the card right cou- Enterprise Mobile Applications Will 32 Information Breachthe
Drive the Next Mobile Wave Oriented Service in Future
pled with the right push to mobile app developers encouraging more Threat is Internal By Vimali Swamy
To subscribe to siliconindia 3G apps to be developed and also to develop a clear understanding By Rajesh Parthasarathy,
Visit www.siliconindia.com or send email to between the operator and the mobile startups so that both can flour- 22 [VC Talk]
subscription@siliconindia.com ish. For 3G, there is much to gain from the buzz created by online app
MENTIS Software
44 [SI Blog]
Startup Ideas the DFJ Would India to INDIA
stores of Apple, Nokia, Samsung, and Sony Ericsson, and on Face- 34 [Management]
Like to Fund
Copyright © 2009 siliconindia, Inc. All rights reserved. Reproduction
in whole or part of any text, photography or illustrations without writ-
book and Orkut as well, where developers can sell directly to con- The Pokhran Way
ten permission from the publisher is prohibited.The publisher assumes
By Mohanjit Jolly, DFJ India Fostering Productivity and
no responsibility for unsolicited manuscripts, photographs or illustra- sumers. Of course, they must pay a yearly fee and 30 percent of their By Manan Bhatt,
tions. Views and opinions expressed in this publication are not neces-
revenues to the service platform, perhaps much lesser initially, which Organizational Effectiveness Geodesic Information Systems
24 [Technology] Via Employee Engagement
sarily those of the magazine and accordingly, no liability is assumed by
the publisher thereof. may encourage more mobile app developers.
Facing Upto the Green Challenge By Nanda Ramanujam, 46 [SI 20 Profile]
siliconindia’s circulation is audited and certified
by BPA International. siliconindia is available through By Vikas Bansal, Carrier Sales Axentis Software
mainstream retail outlets such as Barnes & Noble, Borders, and
Tower Records. It is also available at ethnic Asian Indian stores in Please do share your thoughts with us.
major Indian hot spots across the U.S.The magazine is also dis- Christo Jacob
Managing Editor
tributed at major trade shows and conferences, including Comdex, Internet

|5|
World and PC Expo.
editor@siliconindia.com
siliconindia June 2010
 Great
By Pradeep Elankumaran
The author Director of R&D/Architect, Intridea.
He can be reached at pradeepe@gmail.com
Technological Prescience & Building
in my
opinion
Indian Products
T
here was a curious moment on
my trip to India this year when
I realized that the majority of
the country utilizes a compo-
nent of the GSM cellphone
protocol from 1985 - the ability to send
short text messages - in a manner that’s
completely different from what I was used
to in the Western world. SMS is ridicu-
lously ingrained in almost every aspect of
Indian society now, starting from friends
and family using it to communicate cheaply
to event and train ticketing and even mar-
keting products to a distinct clientele. While
this in itself is not surprising in a country
like India with its sharply segmented mar-
ket and quickly-adapting but value-con-
scious consumers, what’s truly curious is
the fact that SMS has only recently seen
rapid growth in the West, with the teenage
Adoption of new technology is not a linear process; and while a
piece of technology may be a perfect fit, it doesn’t appear so
Pradeep Elankumaran during its infancy due to the Indian market conditions
crowd enthusiastically sending messages to
match up with the way the rest of the world
has been using the format for years now.
The kind of SMS marketing campaigns that
India has been running successfully for
years have only recently started to take hold
in the mobile culture of the West. What’s
happening here?
siliconindia
|6|June 2010
The ‘great indian number trick’ always
applies when you’re talking about India, a
country that has a population of over a bil-
lion; even a small fraction of the market is
still quite a lot of people when compared
to most other countries. At the same time,
what works for the rest of the world more
often than not fails miserably in India, as
many big multinationals have discovered
to their dismay (for instance Kelloggs’ and
Coca-Cola’s marketing problems) over the
last decade. With this kind of market con-
ditions, adoption of new technology is
truly not a linear process, and while in ret-
rospect a piece of technology may seem a
perfect fit, it doesn’t appear so during its
infancy in the Indian market. Again taking
SMS as an example, missteps, sudden
growth spurts, and many failed ideas have
converged to bring forth a standard, rec-
ognizable format that provides opportuni-
ties for both personal and economic
growth for the majority of Indian con-
sumers and businesses. The companies
that were shrewd enough to see the imme-
diate advantages of the then-new format a
few years back were the ones that are now
reaping big, big dividends.
Let’s take for example SMSGup-
shup. They run an SMS-based social
networking service that (among other
features) lets people subscribe to top-
ics of their interest using their cell-
phones; whenever new content is
posted about a topic all subscribers
are notified immediately on their
phone. They understand that their
segment of the Indian market consists
of people who require information
quickly, effortlessly, at dirt cheap
rates, and using technology that they
are comfortable with and understands
their cellphones. At this point SMS-
Gupshup’s network consists of 26
million users, and is growing with
$12 million in funding quite recently.
This is pure innovation tailored to a
particular market, and hopefully
showing other Indian startups the way
things should be done in India.
Building Products for India Using
New Technology
So, if you’re an Indian software or
hardware entrepreneur looking to
build products for the current and fu-
ture Indian market, what should you
be concerned about? First, drop all
thoughts of global expansion for the
moment. Your product needs testing
and growth on Indian soil before it will
ever be ready for a global launch. Re-
member, there’s always more money
to be made at the bottom of the pyra-
mid than at the top. Apart from finan-
cial issues, after speaking with many
Indian Web entrepreneurs, you realize
that once your vision is in place and
your market has been defined more
often than not your problems are re-
lated to people rather than process. At
the same time, solid technological and
procedural foundations need to be es-
tablished to ensure quality and to truly
cement a product into place in a mar-
ket like India’s. Let’s talk about both
at this point.
Technology-wise, open source and
open standards trump all in the long
run. In a country like India, it’s almost
impossible to have useful closed sys-
tems, and your software and overall
architecture should reflect that. Open
source software lets you leverage the
years of work that quality developers
have already put towards developing a
stable piece of software, along with
the freedom to modify whenever nec-
essary to fit your product’s vision.
Working with open standards ensures
seamless integration with other prod-
ucts and services later on in your prod-
uct’s pipeline - no developer likes
software that doesn’t play nice.
Your product needs testing
and growth on Indian soil
before it will ever be ready
for a global launch; drop all
thoughts of global
expansion for the momen
Feature-wise, your intuition and
years of experience living in India
should give you an innate and pro-
nounced edge when it comes to build-
ing out products that your country’s
citizens want. Being aware of your
own self and noticing behavior and
usage patterns of various technologies
among your friends, coworkers, and
family will bring forth new ideas for
product improvement. Take heed of
these ideas and run them ruthlessly
through the wringer for flaws and im-
perfections, then shine it up, build, and
release. Remember, the Indian market
eats up technologies that solve real
problems. For instance, just look at the
Indian Railways reservations website;
it may be slow at 8 AM, but that does-
n’t mean that people aren’t using it,
and it’s miles ahead of the system that
existed before.
Vital to your dream of launching a
successful product in India is your
ability to cheaply and rapidly iterate
the product. If you take more than a
week to release a new version of soft-
ware, you’re doing it wrong. You and
the rest of the Indian market as con-
sumers expect quality as a birthright,
and rightfully so. They will tell you if
your product is no good, and you’d be
wise to listen, then rinse and repeat. If
your shop doesn’t have the capability
of quickly delivering the right high-
quality product at the right time,
you’re sunk. Use the new rapid devel-
opment languages and frameworks
that are readily available, leverage the
computing clouds to scale out to mil-
lions of users, and interface with ex-
isting websites to market your product
cheaply - all is fair in the products
game, especially when you’re playing
for such high stakes.
From my conversations with In-
dian startup CEOs and techies in gen-
eral, the main problem with
entrepreneurship in India is not the
lack of vision, it’s the lack of people
to execute it. This is a topic that comes
up surprisingly often, and there’s a dif-
ferent approach to this that might help.
Don’t hire by skill, hire by smartness.
Smart people learn quick, adapt quick,
and are usually passionate about work-
ing on something they like. Just make
sure that your product is interesting
enough to hold their attention, and
you’ll be off to a great start.
The Road Ahead
We’re now fast approaching a point
where India is catching up to techno-
logical changes in the Western world
a lot quicker than before. This means
that opportunities will arise soon for
leveraging new technology in ways
that make sense for the Indian con-
sumer; ways that more often than not
don’t apply in other countries. Sharp,
clear-eyed entrepreneurs with vision
are few and far in between, but if you
know that you’re one of them, and are
willing to put in the effort, there are
new businesses to run and platforms to
develop. Build products for the India
that exists now as well as the one that
will exist a few years from now and
you’ll definitely reap the rewards. si
siliconindia
|7|
June 2010
in
W T
Are you Ready to Give Up
Textbooks for a Tablet PC?
ith a wave of tablet PCs
hitting the consumer mar-
ket, there has been a lot of
discussions on whether these devices
can emerge as an alternative to text-
books for the student community.
Though, many agree that these de-
vices can one day replace the good
old textbooks in developed countries,
can this be the same scenario in a
country like India also?
The tech majors seem to be very con-
fident about the opportunities of the
tablets, especially in the education sec-
tor. After Apple unveiled its tablet PC, the
iPad, several tech majors have started
showing off their own 'iPad killers'. Join-
ing this long list of contenders waiting to
rule the tablet world is an India based
firm Notion Ink, which unveiled its
'Adam' tablet in January this year at CES.
And the person who co-founded this
W
Harvard Gets its First Indian-American Dean
hen Nitin Nohria, an alum-
nus of Indian Institute of
Technology, joined Harvard
as a faculty in 1988, none would have
thought that a history is in the making.
Today, after 22 years, he stands to be
the first Indian-American Dean of the
prestigious Harvard Business School.
The 48-year-old leadership professor
will serve as the 10th dean of Harvard
Business School from July 1, succeed-
ing the current dean Jay Light.
Though, he was one of the high
profile professors at Harvard, Prof.
Nohria was not necessarily the most
obvious choice for the job. Many in-
siders predicted that senior associate
dean Srikant Datar or Carl Kester,
Deputy Dean for Academic Affairs,
would be appointed. However, his ex-
perience within India and his stints at
siliconindia
|8|
June 2010
By Benny Thomas
firm, Rohit Rathi believes that in the next
2-3 years tablets can replace textbooks in
India at least in higher education. How-
ever, Rathi feels that there is a major role
that the government should also play in
order to increase the penetration of these
devices. "The two main challenges in
India are connectivity and availability of
devices," says Rathi.
Today, several institutes in the US
have already started using tablets instead
of textbooks by collaborating with tech
firms. However, there are still some is-
sues that the education community in
India is concerned about. "The devices
should come with certain features that
even engineering students can use, that
too at an affordable cost, not many such
tablets are available as of now," points
out B. N. Jain, Professor of Computer
Science at Indian Institute of Technology,
Delhi. As far as pricing is concerned
London Busi-
ness School
made Nohria
the right
choice to
bring in a
global per-
spective to
the dean's po- Nitin Nohria
sition.
Nohria received his degree in
chemical engineering in 1984 from the
Indian Institute of Technology, Mum-
bai, which also eventually awarded
him with its distinguished alumnus
medal in 2007. He then received his
doctoral degree in management from
the Massachusetts Institute of Tech-
nology's Sloan School of Management
in 1988 where he earned an outstand-
ing doctoral thesis award in behavioral
in
Despite Efforts Indian IT Firms Struggle to Hike Billing Rates
he domestic information tech- is not like India's. Some Western financial services companies in North
nology (IT) firms are grappling economies may have come out of the America spend the most on IT with
with several market pressures trough, but still there is no growth. We an allocation of close to 8 percent of
like wage inflation, subdued demand, are not really in a high-demand mar- their total revenue, while airlines
rupee appreciation, and others. ket yet," says Subhash Dhar, Senior spend the least at 1.95 percent. Com-
Amidst these strains tech vendors in vice-president and Head of the com- munication firms set aside six per-
India are in a row with their customers munications service providers (CSP) cent, construction five percent,
to dilute margin impacts from market business unit. healthcare four percent, and retail 2.5
forces by pushing up the billing rate Dhar pinpoints that uncertainty percent. Experts feel that if at all any
by 10 to 15 percent, which is not easy. continues to plague the global econ- upswing in pricing occurs, it will not
Companies like Sonata Software omy. Most companies in the West set happen any time soon. Chandramouli
and Infosys Technologies are having aside opex and capex spends for IT, C S, Director-advisory services, Zin-
Rathi explains that the average price of a tough time to convince customers to just like they do for R&D. Last year, nov Management Consulting says,
the tablet will be around Rs. 15,000, pay higher prices besides the prevail- they utilized the opex budget, but “Rate revision by IT customers will
which would be affordable for students ing optimism among the tech vendors capex was left untouched. When this not happen before 12-18 months.”
doing their higher studies. and the improved guidance. “At In- capex is released, demand for IT According to him, till then, cost pres-
With both the academia and the fosys, we're trying (to hike prices) but services will go up and that could sures would be taken care by increas-
tech community ready to upgrade to it's not working. The world economy push up prices. As per Gartner data, ing the scale of operations. si
the tablet generation, a thrust from
the government can further increase
the use of these devices in a country
like India that can revolutionize the
education system.
and policy sciences. Following that, he
joined the Harvard faculty as an assis-
tant professor in 1988, became an as-
sociate professor five years later, and
then served as the Richard P. Chapman
Professor of Business Administration
since 1999.
His current academic interests in-
clude the theory and practice of leader-
ship, the study of human motivation,
the analysis of management practices
critical to corporate success, and the
strategic and organizational challenges
of globalization. The latest of his six-
teen books, - Handbook of Leadership
Theory and Practice - has been co-
edited by his Harvard colleague Rakesh
Khurana and reflects a colloquium he
organized as part of Harvard's centen-
nial in 2008 to stimulate serious schol-
arly research on leadership. si
in
B
Indian Developed Software Makes Blurry Pictures Clear
lurred pictures are often a
worry, especially when the
photos hold special memo-
ries. But worry no more; Neel Joshi,
a computer vision engineer at the
University of California, San Diego
and his colleagues have developed a
software that can transform blurry
photographs into clear pictures that
are worth keeping.
Joshi realized that precious mo-
ments are often lost due to blur in-
O
Indian IT Sector Scouts for Expatriates to Bridge Skill Gap
f late, the Indian IT industry
has been on a tremendous
hiring spree but a majority of
them are expatriates. With a growing
gap in skills in local talent, it is nat-
ural that the industry scouts for tal-
ent abroad.
The Bombay Stock Exchange
(BSE) had hired Madhu Kannan as
the CEO in May last year. The over-
seas based Kannan was the Manag-
ing Director in the corporate strategy
group at Bank of America-Merill
Lynch. Infosys Technologies has
around 100 expats in the middle and
senior management levels working in
India. In July last year, Wipro hired
siliconindia
|10| June 2010
duced by camera shake and poor light-
ing when he and his colleagues stud-
ied home photo collections and saw
that the faces in many pictures were
blurry. Unlike Photoshop, the software
developed by Joshi does not remodel
ones physical features in a picture. But
it can fix problems with the photo -
blurriness or shade - by sharpening up
facial features according to the stock
image of a particular face.
The software developed by the
Martha Bejar to head its global sales
and operations.
"Some are hired to fill skill gaps.
There is also a lot many who want to
work for a world class company that
has its base in India. They want to
have an India experience in their CV,"
says T.V. Mohandas Pai, Director and
Head of Human Resources and Train-
ing at Infosys.
Sanat Kawatkar from Towers
Watson has estimated that 25 percent
of actuaries in India are from over-
seas who are paid competent salaries,
when compared to the developed
markets. "Insurance firms typically
hire expats to fill management posi-
team uses an algorithm that uses facial
recognition methods like those in
some photo editors to find a sharp
image with a similar pose. The pattern
of color and light in the blurry face is
then tweaked to match the model
photo. The software can also add color
and shine to black and white pictures.
The software is yet to be available
commercially. But when it does, no
more losing out on special moments
of life.
tions in finance and actuarial serv-
ices, in which the local talent pool is
limited," he says.
"Expats offer Indian companies the
'know-how, the know-who, and the
know-what' that they would find diffi-
cult, if not impossible, to replicate ef-
fectively," says Dipak C. Jain, Dean
Emeritus at the Kellogg School of
Management.
Just as the US workforce is
'browning' with the addition of foreign
talent, so too we see the trend that
India is slowly 'creaming' as foreign-
ers increasingly seek opportunities in
the world's largest democracy," he
says in the Amrop study. si
E
Now, Prisoners to Run BPOs
ver imagined, why do we con-
vict criminals and offenders?
The sole reason is to rehabili-
tate their mindset and make them re-
alize their mistakes to help them
transform to become better human
beings. But do the prisons in India
have any such facility?
According to a national financial
daily, there’s one in Hyderabad’s
Cherlapally Central Jail, which would
have a BPO unit in its premises. It is
a public private partnership where the
global IT firm Radiant Info Systems
will invest money and expertise in the
unit and the establishment space
along with the manpower would be
T
IPL on Mobile, a Big Success, Report
he world of cricket gradually
came home with the radio fol-
lowed by the television. It has
now reached an entirely new level to
connect with the fans through the mo-
provided by the prison authorities.
With a strength of around 70 odd
inmates in one shift, the BPO will run
in three shifts. The prisoners will
work from within the 'closed space' of
the BPO office and will be taken out
of the locked enclosure at the begin-
ning and end of each shift.
Jail officials say that the ‘interest
level and aptitude’ of the inmates will
be considered before involving them
in this ambitious project. According
to C N Gopinatha Reddy, Director
General of Prisons, Andhra Pradesh,
as many as 200-250 inmates could be
engaged in the BPO unit and they will
be shortlisted from inmates that are
bile. Gone are the days and times
when one had to sit in front of the tel-
evision to catch the live action of the
sport. The new style of cricket’s for-
mat laid down by the IPL has intensi-
fied the interest of the audience. Any
information related to cricket excites
most of the public.
According to a report, as compared
to last year the mobile platform saw a
100 percent rise in the user interest for
receiving a word about cricket. This
has also revived the interest in the
sport, which was on the verge of de-
cline due to excessive number of
matches being played nowadays. In
this fast moving world no one has the
time to sit for hours in front of the TV
and watch a game. For the diehard
cricket lovers all over the world, the
use of mobiles to get updates on the
sport is like a boon.
"The IPL on the mobile platform
has received tremendous response
from mobile users across the country.
The rate at which mobile phone own-
in
matriculates and graduates. Officials
explain that those shortlisted would
first be trained by experts and later
absorbed by the BPO company.
"For starters, the convicts work-
ing at the BPO would not have access
to phones as is the case in a call cen-
ter. They would be involved in bank-
related work of data entry and
transfer," says Reddy. "The idea is to
ensure that on being released, the
prisoners find it easy to get absorbed
in the mainstream. Prisoners often
find getting suitable employment post
release a tough task. So, this is an at-
tempt to ensure that their employers
know them well in advance."
ers in India are consuming the IPL in-
formation on their phone is a testi-
mony to the value, simplicity, and the
premium content the service offers.
Mobile has become one of the main
sources of information and entertain-
ment across the country," says Kedar
Sohoni, President, Informate Mobile
Intelligence.
The interest of the viewers reached
such a level that the sports sites had
higher page views. The official web-
site for IPL reached a distinguished
level followed by Cricinfo.com. The
season 3 of IPL witnessed that in the
gaming section Brian Lara cricket,
Cricket T20 world Championship app,
and Freddie Flintoff were the top
games. Many of the cricket games that
were played last year found visibility
in this season too.
The use of mobile for creating
more viewers for cricket is indeed a
good idea as it helps the public to en-
vision an interesting match without
wasting much time. si
siliconindia
|11|
June 2010

in
CIOs are now Expected to be Master of All Trades
ho said that, the CIOs are the
ones responsible for an orga-
W nization’s processes and prac-
tices supporting the flow of
information? Their role is manifold,
taking cognizance of the current com-
petitive business environment. In a bid
to make the best of the growth oppor-
tunities, the CIO’s role in organiza-
tions has turned critical. As per the
research firm Gartner, it is the trait to
manage the operations while grabbing
the opportunities with an entrepre-
neurial mindset that makes the CIOs
reel out better profits.
"For IT leaders, entrepreneurial
growth and the shift from a 'prob-
lem-focused' organization to one
that is 'opportunity-focused' require
Now, Mobile Phones are Used More for Text, Internet
s long as people have the need to
share their excitement with oth-
A ers the written form of commu-
nication is bound to exist. The saying
‘think before you speak’ also supports
the fact that formulation of words is a
good way to share wisdom. The eluci-
dation through written words is an eas-
ier way to manifest all sorts of
information to others. The reversal
came both through a 50 percent jump
in text messaging and the rise of data-
first smartphones like the Droid and
iPhone. The design of large-screened
phones for the use of Internet also
works in support of texting one’s ac-
quaintances.
The companies with the most mar-
ket share in smartphones are those that
have the most experience producing
touchscreen or QWERTY keyboard
devices such as Apple and RIM, where
call-focused companies like Nokia
siliconindia
|12| June 2010
more planning and execution than
simply changing the organization
chart," Gartner vice-president, Jorge
Lopez says.
Entrepreneurial IT organizations
must maintain a dual focus of achiev-
ing targeted growth while running the
current business. Building new
sources of revenue and positioning
the business for dominance in the
new venture is an entrepreneurial task
and this requires an equally entrepre-
neurial CIO to grab the opportunity.
According to Gartner, there are
two key tools that the CIO must em-
ploy to satisfy the ambitions for en-
trepreneurial growth; frameworks
that set the agenda and actions for
change. The entrepreneurial scope
have struggled. The process of voice
being overtaken by data on cellphones
shows the fact that writing is still the
best form of communication for many.
There are a lot of people who find it
easier to express themselves through
assessment framework enables CIOs
and other business executives to
evaluate the magnitude of the oppor-
tunity and understand the scope of
the task facing IT, as well as other
business units.
However, the analysts also point
out the intricacies involved in don-
ning this entrepreneurial role. "The
greatest conflict faced by entrepre-
neurial CIOs will be the tension be-
tween the team that is focused on the
entrepreneurial opportunities and the
team that is focused on 'keeping the
lights on’. Both must function effec-
tively in an environment of elevated
risk. Failing on either responsibility
is unacceptable and highly dangerous
for the business," Lopez says.
written words. Internet access and text
messaging occupied more data on the
US carriers' networks than did the
equivalent in calls. A lot of social fac-
tors also serve as subsidy to this fact as
most of the teenagers are growing up
with messaging phones. Not only do
the teenagers text their friends, even
the adults are getting used to use the
text form to communicate.
Writing is an ace form of articulat-
ing information as it allows the person
proper time to think before he or she
exhibits the feelings. When we write
down the message to be conveyed, it
becomes simple for the receiver to un-
derstand it.
Calls have also grown shorter and
are now more likely to be used for cru-
cial info rather than usual conversa-
tions. A typical same-area call has
dropped to 1.8 minutes from nearly
2.3 in 2008. si
$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$
Infineta Systems Closes $15 Million
I
Series A Funding
Raj Kanaya
nfineta Systems, co-
founded by Raj
Kanaya and K.V.S.
Ramarao, has closed series A round of
venture capital funding, with $15 million
from Alloy Ventures and North Bridge
Venture Partners. Founded in 2008, the
San Jose headquartered company devel-
ops and markets a line of high perform-
ance network optimization products. With
the bountiful support from Series A fund-
ing, it plans to pioneer a new category of
products that will help Global 2000 enter-
prises address the explosion in inter-data
center traffic resulting from mission criti-
cal storage replication, backup, and emerg-
ing ‘private’ cloud applications. These
products will be based on the company’s
patent-pending Velocity Dedupe En-
gine™, the industry’s first ever hardware
based network deduplication technology.
Axtria Closes
$2.5 Million
Series A
J
Funding
Jaswinder Chadda
aswinder Chadda and Navdeep
Chadda co-founded Axtria has closed
Series A round of venture capital
funding of $2.5 million. The financing led
by Sequoia Capital India also included pri-
vate investors Richard Braddock, Chair-
man and CEO, Fresh Direct, Amarpreet
Sawhney, CEO, Octux; Fred Khosravi,
MD, Incept, and Sandeep Tyagi, Chair-
man and MD, Estee Advisors.
Founded in 2009, the Morristown
based Axtria provides business analytics
technology and services to improve effec-
tiveness in sales, distribution, marketing,
and customer operations. “We provide
predictive analytics and technology solu-
tions to help customers manage their sales
“We see a demand with Global 2000
enterprises or large Web properties that are
struggling to move the ever increasing vol-
ume of traffic between their data centers.
We solve this problem by delivering
the accelerated inter-data center network
fabric - providing optimization for critical
traffic workflows that require high speed
and low latency performance across the
wide area network,” says Kanaya, CEO,
Infineta Systems. “So, out of the gate, we
will bring immense benefits to large en-
terprises that are conducting big SAN
replication and storage backup jobs. Grad-
ually, we will begin also to support the
WAN bandwidth and performance needs
of such emerging use cases as long dis-
tance live migrations, active/active storage
redundancies across multiple data centers,
and more.
Despite a large market opportunity,
and marketing operations. The demand for
our solutions is driven by explosion of
data. Every big company has invested in
technologies including business intelli-
gence (BI), customer relationship man-
agement (CRM), and marketing
automation systems. We provide business
analytics solutions that help customers im-
prove performance of CRM and market-
ing systems,” says Jaswinder Chadda,
CEO, Axtria.
Using a ‘product-enabled service’
model, Axtria’s products are designed
to be integrated with existing applica-
tions, increasing the ROI of IT invest-
ments. The company will use proceeds
from the financing to develop sales, dis-
tribution, and marketing analytics soft-
ware products and to expand its current
US-based operations into India.
Chadda sees a huge requirement for
business analytics solutions for sales
and marketing. Analysts estimate the
industry spending in this sector any-
only a few infrastructure companies have
been funded in the past few years. This
sector requires a large amount of capital
investment to get a scalable business up
and running. Based on its rollup analysis
from meetings with customers and pri-
mary analyst research, Infineta sees an ini-
tial market opportunity in the range of $2
billion. Anticipating competition in the
sector, Kanaya highlights the company’s
uniqueness with the fact that no company
until now has directly addressed the inter-
data center network fabric issue. “Others
have tackled the issue of WAN optimiza-
tion but primarily in the context of opti-
mizing traffic between users residing in
branch offices and data centers. The cus-
tomer problem we solve is fundamentally
different,” he says. With its focus on sig-
nificant technology innovation and a man-
agement team with proven track record,
the 20 people strong company looks for-
ward to revolutionizing inter-data center
WAN acceleration.
where between $5 billon and $10 bil-
lion by 2015. The best analogs for the
business analytics is current spend on
data collection, data management, data
warehousing, business intelligence,
CRM, and marketing automation.
A number of companies have made
business analytics a core growth area
for their business, notable among them
being IBM. There are also several oth-
ers who have added BI in their service
portfolio. But Chadda is not worried.
“We are unique because we combine in-
dustry experience, predictive analytics,
and technology to build sales and mar-
keting solutions,” he says.
At present, the company is 10 mem-
bers strong, of whom four are full time
employees and the other six are con-
sultants working with business part-
ners. Axtria is looking to grow rapidly
in 2010 and setting up an operation in
India by the second half of 2010 is one
of its top most priorities. si
siliconindia
|13|
June 2010
 CEO SPOTLIGHT
Jay Pullur is CEO, Qontext Inc.
S
Qontext integrates social software
with enterprise applications to
enhance enterprise business effi-
ciency through better collaboration.
ocial software, as we all know,
started in the middle of the last
decade as a new way to en-
hance individual self-expression
through media sharing, content cre-
ation, and interaction. Since then, it
has quickly spread to other areas
such as marketing and now it enters
the core of the enterprise.
CIOs today are looking at not just
keeping the lights on, but at ways to
improve the way their organization op-
erates. This year, social software is
among the top trends of corporate IT,
Enterprise Mobile Applications Will Drive the
I
Next Mobile Wave
By Ashok Samuel, CEO, Bravura Technologies
Bravura Technologies is a leading provider of mobile apps for enterprise use.
n the last few years, I have observed
a paradigm shift in the mobile space
both in the US and the markets
abroad. The next 2-3 years will bring in
a lot of opportunities for entrepreneurs in
the area of building mobile applications.
This development will be similar to the
transition of a computer to desktop PC to
laptop. Any applications running on PCs
will be available on the mobile phone in
the near future. And the driving force be-
hind this will be the growing demand for
smartphones  android, apple, blackberry,
windows, and the development platform
siliconindia
|14| June 2010
Enterprise Social Software A
Trend that Needs to be Tapped on
Jay Pullur, CEO, Qontext Inc.
along with virtualization and cloud
computing. The expectation is that so-
cial software will positively contribute
to knowledge management, process
efficiency, innovation, and organiza-
tion ability to respond to change.
If one observes the flurry of recent
product announcements, a common
thing noticeable is a simple set of Web
2.0 like tools, integrated into a social ac-
tivity stream private to an organization.
Too many products appear similar in
their approach. However, I believe that
bringing great adoption within an orga-
nization’s internal user base (typically a
smaller community, compared to the
public social networks on the Web) re-
quires a mix of social activity with busi-
ness content.
We designed Qontext as an enter-
prise social network that easily inte-
grates with other business applications
used by sales, marketing, HR, engineer-
ing, service, distribution, and more. It is
similar to the Salesforce Chatter™ and
they offer. Blackberry leads the pack in
terms of the opportunities it provides en-
trepreneurs for developing ingenious
mobile applications, and android too will
soon catch up in this market because of
its openness.
The mobile applications market itself
will see a change in the next few years.
Thousands of applications have just
started scratching the surface and there is
still a lot of potential that needs tapping
into. I believe that the focus will change
from consumer driven applications to en-
terprise driven applications on mobile.
Tibco Tibbr™ that bring application
feeds into social interaction streams for
its users. Qontext goes a step further, to
create a two-way flow between applica-
tions and the enterprise social network,
enabling contextual collaboration (hence
the name Qontext).
I believe that one of the greatest
challenges for product vendors in the en-
terprise social software space is to step
up the pace of their product innovation
to match the quickly growing wish list
of their user communities. One is no
longer satisfied with just tweets, file
sharing, and discussion forums. The
products would soon grow and special-
ize in different directions such as those
oriented to internal and pre-existing con-
tent, partner and customer interactions,
highly mobile and distributed work-
forces, departmental use-cases, and
more. Young product vendors are better
equipped in this nascent market to inno-
vate faster and bring products that es-
tablished vendors may want to acquire.
Many first time entrepreneurs be-
lieve that they can thrive by building ap-
plications and selling them on app stores
and end up starting a dot com company.
What they do not realize is that at the end
of the day, each one of them is no differ-
ent from the other. This needs to change.
Entrepreneurs need to analyze the pain
points in the industry and start focusing
on solving them. This requires a good in-
dustry experience and capital and a fresh
look at their business model. Entrepre-
neurs simply need to look at the every-
day problems in different sectors and
develop enterprise mobile applications
that can help solve industry specific
problems like those in healthcare, BFSI,
utilities, and the other verticals. When
this happens, entrepreneurs will drive the
next big wave in the mobile space. si
 Caresoft
COVER STORY

Playing
to Win

B
By Christo Jacob

ack in 2003 and 2007, several FDA reports revealed

that about half of 13 factories in the island country of
Q uick Facts
Puerto Rico manufactured contaminated pills. Recent
Founded

reports show that one of the pharmaceutical compa-

1994

nies continued exporting pills that it knew contained

Founder & CEO

small metal particles which were also present inside the bottles the
Deepak Khare

pills were packed in. This was due to the metal content in the drug
Headquarters

manufacturing machineries. Hence, it is imperative that the phar-

Middlesex, NJ

maceutical sector be properly regulated. This is highly essential and

Other Offices

justified as medicines can either save someone’s life or make mat-

Florida, Colorado,

ters worse if proper standards are not maintained in drug manufac-

Pennsylvania,

turing and information about the medical ingredients and their

California, Canada,

effects are not known.

Cyprus, Bhopal

Most pharmaceutical companies today are cautious about hav-

Headcount

ing their business processes in perfect health. Quality control of

250

raw materials, specifications, formulae, manufactruring processes

Vertical

as well as the finished product is paramount, with exact standards

IT Services

often applying to the receipt and storage of raw materials in addi-

Website

tion to the storage and dispatch of finished products. For major

www.caresoftinc.com

players like Pfizer, Schering Plough, Novartis, Merck, and John-

son & Johnson this means that their practices and systems need to
be updated to enable the industry to be more agile and responsive
and yet maintain a control over complex and costly development Deepak Khare
and production processes.

siliconindia
|16| June 2010
 Caresoft, a provider of Custom
Software Development, Temporary IT
SLAs are contracts expectations,“ says Mukesh Nema, Di-
rector, M. P. Pharmaceuticals. Khare
and so are very dry;
Caresoft’s Hyperion Practice
Staff Augmentation, and Outsourced confirms that the product has worked
QA is well aware that the complexities
it is worthy to well among midsized companies that
Boutique Hyperion Implementation Practice. Extreme Hyperion

and challenges of documenting proce- are in the range of $5 to 50 million.

believe in going
Expertise.

dures, monitoring processes, authoriza- But rather than concentrating on one

20/20 Platform: Guaranteed 20% reduction in operating cost for

beyond the contract

tions, and managing heterogeneous vertical, Khare felt the need to expand
existing projects, 20% reduction in budget for new projects, and 20%
improvement in Quality of Service

tracking records are not trivial exer- the company’s portfolio across various
cises. Deepak Khare, CEO, Caresoft and providing the verticals and gain mindshare of the cus-
“No-Fluff” Project Delivery Team. Everyone on the team is Hands-On,
Experienced, Hyperion Guru.

was early to have a strong understand- tomers in finance, energy, insurance,

human touch to
Industry’s strongest onsite-offshore Hyperion Implementation Team.

ing of the major transition that is evolv-
ing in the pharmaceutical sector and no
wonder most of the major players today
are knocking at his doors for the same.
“In fact the very first customer of ours
was from the pharmaceutical vertical.
This has given an extra mileage to us in
having a better understanding of this
vertical,” says Khare.
Caresoft’s customer, M. P. Phar-
one’s services
based system that works on the SaaS
model and does not require any client
side installation of software or server
side installation. Built on XML, XSL,
and AJAX architecture, the facility lets
the client start Care QCMS within 60
manufacturing, public sector, telecom,
and many more. Winning the mindshare
of an Indian government organization
itself is one of the biggest testimonials
about Caresoft’s confidence among its Dhaval Desai
customers. It was Caresoft’s RTI Soft
that was able to grab attention of the more. It also helps in financial consoli-
public sector.
Caresoft’s IT Security Practice
dation. For instance if a US based or-
The RTI (Right to Information) Act ganization has a profit center in Mexico,
is currently being implemented all five profit centers in China, two cost
• Secure infrastructure design and analysis.
• Penetration testing and vulnerability assessment.

maceuticals, had complicated sys- minutes of the subscription approval. across India to improve the governance, centers in India, and a sales team in Eu-
• Securing web application.

For M. P. Pharmaceuticals this was a

• Network & Disaster Recovery availability assessment.

tems, long processes, numerous raw open the administrative processes of the rope, it will help to consolidate the fi-
• Firewall and router reviews.

materials, and above all, a large great relief. The team has been ex- government, and more importantly to nancial reports of the global
• Perform an IDS/IPS rule set review.

amount of human involvement in the
process of making medicines. There
are frequent audits, and there is very
strict demand for quality control data
at all stages of the manufacturing
process. The company needed a state-
of-the-art Laboratory Information
Management System (LIMS) to run
their labs. However, LIMS does not
come cheap. The cost of a typical im-
plementation of LIMS exceeds
a minimum of Rs 50 Lakhs.
But Caresoft’s Care QCMS
has helped its customers in ad-
dressing this issue, improving
product and services quality,
work processes, efficiencies, and
morale, while reducing cost,
standardizing business by giving
it a consistent approach to oper-
ations, meeting government pur-
chasing policies, giving
confidence to customers that
their quality needs will be met,
improving customer satisfaction,
minimizing fraud, reducing re-
work and wastage, and meeting
quality standards set by different
countries. Care QCMS is a Web
tremely happy with the implementation
of Care QCMS. “We would recommend
it to any company looking to implement
a quality control system for batch man-
ufacturing. The Caresoft Team worked
very closely with us to customize and
implement it in our unique situation.
Not only is their support staff very re-
sponsive and knowledgeable but they
have also met and exceeded all of our
make the government accountable. Fol-
lowed by the enforcement of the RTI
Act, the citizens of the country have
gained access to the records of the cen-
tral and the state governments. The RTI
Act empowers an Indian citizen to ask
for information from any of the govern-
ment departments, but the pain point for
most of them is the accessibility of in-
formation. The RTI Act implementation
generates enormous amount
of paperwork. Every RTI ap-
plication must be tracked
and the information re-
quested must be disbursed
within the stipulated time.
The State Information Com-
missions are responsible for
ensuring proper implemen-
tation of the RTI Act
throughout the respective
states. The State Information
Commissions report matters
of governance to the Central
Information Commission on
a regular basis. The issues
are tracked till the informa-
tion requested is provided
and it is ensured that all the
data that an Information Commission
requires of the government organiza-
tions are obtained. At the state level, the
State RTI Commission is responsible to
ensure implementation of the RTI Act
in each and every government, semi-
government, and public organizations.
Currently, there are no cost effective
solutions that allow a smooth transition
of an RTI related request. Self imple-
mentable, Caresoft’s RTI Soft is a Web
based product that allows the public to
request for information from any gov-
ernment organization starting from the
kasba (small village) level to city cor-
poration, district, and state levels.
CARE RTI handles the complex
task of implementing the progress of an
RTI application in a very simple and
logical manner. Caresoft implemented
this for government organizations and
NGOs in Madhya Pradesh. “RTI Soft is
able to provide the mechanism that im-
plements the whole RTI framework for
any organization looking to be compli-
ant with the reporting requirements of
the State Information Commission as
well as the Central Information Com-
mission,” says Rajnish Murab, Director
of Sunita (M) Foundation, an NGO fo-
cusing on helping people help them-
selves. Currently, the company’s 15
member sales team in Bhopal is in talks
with implementing the same in other
government organizations in Madhya
Pradesh and other states like Uttaran-
chal and Chhattisgarh.
From Services to Practices - Care-
soft’s 360 Degree View
Caresoft’s best practices in Hyperion,
security services, and Quality frame-
work could bring in lot more traction.
Caresoft, being an oracle core partner,
implements end-to-end Hyperion solu-
tions for their clients. Hyperion is a fi-
nancial management suite of solutions
from Oracle, which takes care of the
complete financial management re-
quirements of a company - switching
routes, planning, auditing, financial
forecasting, and doing all kinds of fi-
nancial analysis like actual expected
budget versus forecasted revenue and
organization. It will also generate finan-
cial statements as per the local generally
accepted accounting practices in each
country.
AMResorts, a group of more than
20 resorts spread across Latin America
and the Caribbean with the headquarters
coordinating from the United States, is
a global resort management company.
The company found that there were a lot
of flaws in the financial statements re-
ceived from over 20 resorts all over the
world due to which it lost millions of
dollars. The properties under AMRe-
sorts were on a rapid growth trajectory
and, therefore, needed a centralized yet
flexible BI system. With a rising re-
quirement for a common platform of re-
porting, AMResorts was gearing
towards automation of financial reports
and increasing its reach to more and
more granular levels of analysis when it
selected Caresoft as its Hyperion im-
plementer. Caresoft has handled AM-
Resorts Hyperion project since its seed
stage and is now more a part of AMRe-
sorts’ team rather than just an imple-
mentation partner. This project was a
full life-cycle development project in

siliconindia
|18| June 2010 siliconindia
|19|
June 2010
which Caresoft assisted AMResorts to
automate its procedures on all the three
scenarios – actual, budget, and forecast.
Amit Sanghi, Caresoft’s EPM Solu-
tions Architect says, “Our Hyperion
team tirelessly worked for extended
hours breaking complexities of the
maze of financial systems throughout
the company to capture, centralize, and
automate them into a single financial
data management system. It is truly sat-
isfying to see how our System releases
the otherwise blocked time of financial
analysts from mundane spreadsheet ac-
tivities by automating most of the num-
ber crunching. Free from much of report
You may lose more often than you win, but
a single win might overshadow all of your
previous losses
preparation and reporting tasks we are
happy to see that they can now partici-
pate more on the growth frontiers of the
company with their CFO.” Currently,
the team of Financial Analysts at AM-
Resorts manages the reports in a jiffy on
the new financial consolidation system
that Caresoft has implemented, instead
of spending all of their time in consoli-
dating spreadsheets. The system takes
care of all currency conversions and it
creates consolidated financial state-
ments for entire company at the touch
of a button. Emmanuel Samia, Senior
Financial Analyst at AMResorts says,
“Caresoft has done a great job. We are
very happy with the quality of their sup-
port. They go the extra mile in their cus-
tomer support. We are glad that we
chose them as our implementation part-
ner.” “We implemented the system in
record 24 weeks – from start to finish. It
was like a whirlwind; when we hear
victory stories like this, it makes it all
worth it,” says Dhaval Desai - Hyper-
ion Practice Head, Caresoft.
Caresoft also focuses on security
services that are named Second Prac-
tice. In order to have focused provision
siliconindia
|20|
June 2010
of information security advice and as-
surance services within the context of
industry and country-specific regulatory
requirements, Caresoft has partnered
with Symantec. It provides end point se-
curity, network security, and application
security. Caresoft has built long term re-
lationships with major clients and infor-
mation security stakeholders in both the
public and private sectors, providing ex-
ceptional customer focus throughout its
business units. With its modus operandi,
work philosophy, and commitment to
always providing the very best to its
clients, the company has helped them
develop several long term and success-
ful associations. It provides onsite serv-
ices, audits, and assessment with the
help of their team of CISSP certified ex-
perts who have years of experience in
different areas and from varied compli-
mentary backgrounds as MCAs, CEH,
CISSP,CISM, auditors, and also the ed-
ucation vertical. Its pragmatic approach
to IT security begins with the process of
in-depth assessment, and then based on
the analysis it can suggest and provide
help in creating and publishing appro-
priate security standards for the client’s
environment. The standards may in-
clude specific controls for the various
Varsha Sepaha
platforms, a set of best practices that
cross over the platforms, and linkages
of the standards to higher level policies,
governmental regulations, and lot more.
Another practice that Caresoft fo-
cuses on is quality assurance frame-
work. In 2002, a study commissioned
by the US Department of Commerce’s
National Institute of Standards and
Technology concluded that software
bugs, or errors, are so prevalent and so
detrimental that they cost the US econ-
omy an estimated $59 billion annually,
that is about 0.6 percent of the gross do-
mestic product. A good quality assur-
ance framework for software takes into
account two factors - the ability to func-
tionally test all the specifications for
which the software was built and the
ability to test how efficiently and pre-
dictably the software will run under all
specified conditions. Caresoft has com-
plete understanding of customer needs.
Caresoft’s QA services ensure that there
are quick QA implementations done for
these frameworks, where you can de-
velop the portal quickly and roll it out
in two months from scratch to end. For
instance, if there is an organization that
develops portals as quickly as one in
two months, it is difficult for the QA
team to keep pace with it. So, for this
Caresoft has developed a set of tools,
pre-designed templates, and a library
for frameworks that help the company’s
QA frameworks rapidly. The knowl-
edge of tools like Documentum,
WebLogic, WebSphere, and iPlanet en-
abled them to deliver the full benefits
of JAVA technologies. Moreover,
Khare was quick to prove their cus-
tomers, how it can reduce their IT
budget using proven Microsoft tech-
nologies such as COM, MTS, and Vi-
sualBasic.
Commitment Beyond Contract
Despite a myriad of products and serv-
ices on offer, the foundation of Care-
soft’s business success lies in the
customer centric culture within the
company. The company promotes a
Caresoft Team
culture of commitment and curiosity;
hence not believing in signing unreal-
istic deals. Since inception, every asso-
ciate is instilled with the values and
culture the company stands for, and
they are tuned to the fact that it is be-
yond the contracts that relationships are
built. Khare made sure that most of the
employees had a relentless research
and development mindset and a com-
mitment to stay ahead of the technol-
ogy curve with continuous in-house
training and career development. This
has boosted each individual in their
team to take ownership of their actions
and realize how individual actions
build a champion team.
The commitment of Caresoft re-
flects in its motto itself - ‘We Care’.
The company has a legacy of bringing
a million dollar smile to its customers
through its best of the class customer
service. Khare always wanted to have a
deep understanding of the customer
satisfaction. So, in order to serve its
customers better, the company has set
up a very stringent methodology in
customer care service. It has monthly
customer care service reviews that it
presents in detail to the customers on a
quarterly basis. In fact, this has helped
Caresoft to prove themselves to their
customers how they have met the re-
quirements according to Service Level
Agreements (SLAs), and how they
have gone beyond the SLAs. “Accord-
ing to me, SLAs are contracts but very
dry. We believe in going beyond the
contract and providing the human
touch,” says Khare.
Life@Caresoft
The company is not only well known
for its unique customer services, but
also as a great place to work in. The
company is keen on grooming the em-
ployees and creating a place where
they can learn and grow. The key to
Caresoft’s success is the belief that
something great is always out there,
waiting to be discovered, and the effer-
vescent entrepreneurial spirit om-
nipresent in the company. “In keeping
with the Caresoft culture, we celebrate
all achievements - big and small, to-
gether as a team. We take fun seriously
and believe in working hard and party-
ing harder,” says Varsha Sepaha, HR
Manager, Caresoft. Summer picnics
and Christmas-season parties for chil-
dren and adults offer everyone the op-
portunity to meet in more relaxed
circumstances and look back on a job
well done. Having grown rapidly over
the last decade, Caresoft still enjoys an
environment more like a small startup
with a high degree of flexibility in roles
and a minimum of structure, guideline,
and policy. Common sense is the rule
and good judgement is everyone’s re-
sponsibility. “This is what makes us
proud to be one of America’s fastest
growing companies and a genuine suc-
cess story,” she says. si
Behind the Scene
William Shakespeare once said
“Time has a different appeal for
everyone.” This is the same in case
of Deepak Khare too. Founded in the
fall of 1994 to provide software con-
sulting services to Fortune 500 com-
panies, Caresoft has grown steadily,
even as the software industry itself
went through the bubble and bust
cycles. A graduate in mechanical en-
gineering, Khare has founded sev-
eral businesses in the last 18 years.
Currently, many of these businesses
are flourishing. Khare never hesi-
tated to try out new ventures. Back
in his career, even though he had
failed ventures like Greating-
town.com, and a few more, Khare
was not pulled down. On the con-
trary, learning from his mistakes he
rose like a phoenix. “If we look
around, whether it is in the US or
India or elsewhere, everybody
wants to move forward, achieve ex-
cellence, and do well with one’s life.
That’s where entrepreneurship was
born out of. The only thing that
stops people from becoming entre-
preneurs is the fear of risk and fail-
ure and fear of people. Like anything
in life you win some and you lose
some. You may lose more often than
you win, but a single win might over-
shadow all of your previous losses.
One must be resilient, learn from fail-
ures, and move forward because en-
trepreneurship keeps you young,
fun, and alive.”
During his career as a software
consultant, he worked with presti-
gious clients like J.P. Morgan Chase,
Hoffman LaRoche, Scholastic, Man-
agement Science Associates, and
Warner Systems. In fact this has
helped Khare take Caresoft into the
next level of it growth. This steady
growth has not gone unnoticed.
Today, Caresoft is a highly respected
company because of Khare’s magi-
cal touch.
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June 2010
 E
VC Talk: By Mohanjit Jolly
The author is Executive Director, DFJ India
ntrepreneurs often ask a fairly simple
Startup Ideas sounding question “what do I need to get
DFJ excited about my idea”. The answer
is really two-fold. There is a mix of sec-
tor-agnostic and sector-specific re-
sponse. Let me focus on the sector-agnostic first.
the DFJ DFJ, as an investor, is focused on a blend of early to
mid-stage investment (series A, B and C). Typically,
an investment thesis revolves around team, technol-
ogy/differentiation, traction/ validation and market
Would Like size/opportunity. At an early stage, however, there
often isn’t much that an entrepreneur can offer. The
team is incomplete, the technology may not be de-
veloped or fully baked and given that there isn’t a
to Fund product or service, there isn’t any traction or rev-
enues. What does matter at that stage is undeniable
passion and an absolutely resolute attitude towards
“making it happen, come what may”.
A perfect example of that was DFJ’s investment
in Attero, emerging as a leader in the electronic
waste recycling business in India. When Nitin and
Rohan, brothers and co-founders approached DFJ,
they had virtually nothing except a power point and
a spreadsheet. But it was the passion that they ex-
uded, and the fact that they were willing to back that
passion by investing their family savings, that con-
vinced NEA-IndoUS ventures and DFJ to put in
$6million into the company. We were also convinced
that the market for ewaste was enormous and grow-
ing, and that trying to replicate what Attero was
planning on doing was going to be non-trivial (in
essence, it’s not a business that would create many
me-too’s).
On the later stage front, the entrepreneur needs
to be able to convince DFJ that, in a very capital ef-
ficient manner, he/she has been able to make solid
progress, that the business model has either been
proven or on its way to being proven, and finally that
the market is large and growing. Examples of late
stage investments for DFJ are companies like Clear-
trip and iYogi where the capital requirement was for
scaling the business, not for proving the business.
Finally, what has to be clear in the entrepreneur’s
mind is the overall potential (how big can it be over
what period of time). Fund IX, from which DFJ is
investing, is a $650 million fund. DFJ is looking to
turn that into a $2billion+ return. For DFJ to get ex-
cited, the startup has to have the potential of return-
Mohanjit Jolly
ing at least $50 million or more to the fund. To make
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June 2010
the math simple, assuming that DFJ
owns 20percent of a given company
upon exit, the exit value of the com-
pany has to be at least $250million..
Before approaching DFJ, the entre-
preneur in his/her mind needs to be
convinced that the idea is big and for
a larger fund, is going to “move the
needle” for a fund’s IRR. I have often
said, that before approaching VCs,
entrepreneurs should do their home-
work and make sure that the funds
that they approach are in line with the
overall business that he/she is look-
ing to build.
Coming to the topic of specific
sectors, DFJ’s name has been syn-
onymous for years with consumer
media (internet and mobile) and
cleantech. Those continue to be key
themes in India as well. But in addi-
tion, India holds tremendous promise
in areas such as healthcare, educa-
tion, logistics/distribution, and retail.
I often joke that the sure shot way of
making money in India is to open an
institution that is a combination of a
school, hospital and a temple. The
key challenge that companies face in
India is truly around scale. The pos-
sible online revolution holds promise
(whether that happens on the PC or
the mobile phone, remains to be
seen), so consumer media is some-
thing that we are closely watching.
Right now, a pure online play is still
difficult in India. There is often a
physical infrastructure required in
terms of handholding, and servicing
(examples are plenty in travel, matri-
monial, jobs etc.). But it’s a matter of
when, not if, India will start hitting
the types of numbers that China, for
example, has shown around areas
such as online gaming, ecommerce,
entertainment, mobile infrastructure
and applications to name a few. For
PC based online penetration to get to
critical mass, reliable power issues
The entrepreneur
needs to be able to
convince a VC that, in a
very capital efficient
manner, he/she has
been able to make solid
progress, that the
business model has
either been proven or
on its way to being
proven, and finally that
the market is large and
growing.
need to be addressed. In the mean-
time, the mobile phone may become
the so-called First Screen. As con-
nectivity improves, as feature-rich
handsets become more affordable,
and as new business models around
In 2010, mobile gaming
end-user revenue is to grow
19 percent globally, exceed-
ing $5.6 billion, says Gart-
ner. Gartner estimates
70-80 percent of all mobile
consumer applications
downloaded are mobile
games. Additionally, 60-70
percent of these down-
loaded games are "free."
The market will continue to
see steady growth through
2014, when the market is
projected to reach
$11.4 billion.
new applications proliferate, the mo-
bile revolution will continue to un-
fold. As an example, I was recently
speaking with an entrepreneur who
enables people to be able to capture
voice, photos and video and send
them as sms to their friends/family.
Additionally, other people can act
as “mobile jockeys” broadcasting in-
formation or creating interactive mo-
bile sessions with thousands of
spectators or participants. What was
astounding to me was the fact that
80percent of this company’s regis-
tered user base was not in metros but
in tier 2/3 towns, where more and
more people can afford gprs hand-
sets, but without reliable power, have
no use for a TV or a PC, even though
they have both in their homes. As a
result, they resort to the mobile as the
device for communication and enter-
tainment.
Additionally, the entire BoP rep-
resents an enormous market, which
provides opportunities for entrepre-
neurs in the same areas as mentioned
above (financial services, healthcare,
education, cleantech, mobile, re-
tail…). The challenge yet again is
scalability. Tapping a large yet frag-
mented user base holds promise but
will be tough. But those who can
crack it, will create large sustainable
enterprises. The MFI movement is
one such success story that is playing
out. There will surely be others.
Bottom line: The T’s (team, trac-
tion and technology) and the M (mar-
ket) on the one hand are important for
any business, but key to rising above
the noise on the other hand is passion
and conviction that are infectious.
DFJ is interested in sectors that are
large and growing, ideally where
leveraging technology, one can build
a solid trustworthy brand and create
organization in an otherwise highly
unorganized fragmented space. si
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June 2010
Technology: By Vikas Bansal
The author is Director – Carrier Sales, India and South Asia
Facing Upto the
Cable&Wireless Worldwide
Green Challenge
Here’s how IT and Data Centre Managers can respond
The case for ‘Greening’ the data
centre
Businesses today rely on telecoms and
data networking to run their organisa-
tions but this increasing demand has
also had an impact on carbon emis-
sions. In fact, “IT- equipment world-
wide is responsible for roughly 3-4
percent of CO2 emissions which cor-
responds to the total amount of CO2
emitted by airplanes” says Simon
Mingay from Gartner.
It is likely that global carbon diox-
ide emissions from Internet Data Cen-
tres (IDC) will continue to grow. For
example, data centre energy consump-
tion as a percentage of total U.S. elec-
tricity use has doubled since 2000, and
IDCs and servers will double their en-
ergy consumption again by 2012, ac-
cording to the US Environmental
siliconindia
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June 2010
Protection Agency.
In the UK, energy consumption
from non-domestic ICT (Info-Comm
Technology) equipment increased by
more than 70 percent from 2000-2006
and is expected to grow by a further 40
percent by 2020, according to a report
by the UK-based Environmental IT
Leadership Team (EILT).
Making the U-Turn
Providing ‘greener’ telecoms and data
networking is fast becoming a priority
for all CIO and IT Directors today.
This is a sea change in perspective –
that has come about in just the last few
years with many IT and IDC managers
feeling caught between their existing
IT best practices and environmentally-
sustainable computing. They tell us
that their data centers was never de-
signed to be environmentally efficient
and infact, were set up to cater for re-
dundancy and failover; this by default,
meant more servers than optimally re-
quired, leading to greater power con-
sumption. Now, IT managers are
having to look at options to make
these data centers green.
These compulsions, actually, are
not just restricted to the IT or IDC
Manager level. Running of energy ef-
ficient datacentres will become more
prevalent forming part of the defined
responsibilities and KPIs of the CIO.
Metrics will involve more efficient
use of the IT budget, with enhanced
performance and efficiencies – lead-
ing them to consider increasing use of
virtulisation solutions and making
data storage, retrieval and transfer far
more efficient.
It’s not all over... there’s hope yet
Contrary to popular belief, there is a
natural convergence between green
practices and good business. Effi-
ciency in business invariably means
getting the best effect for the lowest
cost. Additionally, the high cost of
power means the potential savings
from efficient IDC management are
huge. Research firm IDC estimates
that for every dollar spent on computer
hardware, another 50 cents is spent on
energy. It predicts that will increase to
more than 71 cents by 2011.
Cable&Wireless sees the first part
of reducing consumption as organisa-
tional. Interest needs to start at the top
with support from the CEO and the
senior management team. Naturally,
any program to increase IT energy
efficiency and reduce a carbon foot-
print also needs to be part of corpo-
rate social responsibility and
environmental efforts.
However, most ICT departments
are only marginally involved in their
organisation’s social responsibility
strategies and a significant proportion
has never been asked to focus on en-
ergy efficiency. It is essential to mesh
the IT group’s goals with the organi-
sation’s facilities management team
and establish baseline measurements
on energy use and costs.
The second part is the design and
running of data centres themselves.
Many data centres today were built at
the time of the tech boom. They tend
to lack floor space, and have difficulty
in accommodating today’s high-den-
sity servers. Energy management will
become more and more an issue for
IDC managers when procuring new
hardware and in daily operations.
The third is to help educate the
market about energy efficiency and to
adopt standardized measurements.
The role of ICT suppliers here is also
critical. They need to be able to speak
a common language with standard
metrics. Currently, each chip and
server vendor has its own definitions
and green practices and according to
an industry survey, some 60 percent
of ICT professionals consider vendor
environmental information from their
suppliers to be confusing.
Finally, companies should fully
utilise existing computing power
through consolidation into fewer and
higher performance systems. As they
make commitments on carbon emis-
sion targets, government leaders need
to recognize that their compliance
policies can in fact add to the data stor-
age load. Instead, governments need to
provide incentives to ICT departments
to implement Green IT practices and
technologies as part of national carbon
emission programs.
Reducing the impact and optimizing
resources
With energy resources growing
scarcer, and energy prices rising, this
means data centre energy costs over
the lifetime of a server could easily ex-
ceed hardware costs sometime in the
future. Taking care of the environment
is about a combination of solutions,
services and improved processes that
reduce the environmental impact
while reducing both resources and
costs.
Customers are looking for dy-
namic data centre solutions and a ho-
listic approach to “green
infrastructure” to save energy, cooling,
space and resources but they need to
have the right balance between busi-
ness benefits and environmental bene-
fits in data centre space.
Businesses need to adopt a three-step
data centre strategy:
1. Reduce Consumption - Implement
best-practices based technology and
processes; offer products, solutions
and services that aim to balance
business and environmental bene-
fits.
a. Deploy servers, which as reduce
power consumption of CPUs and
I/O by improved, chip technolo-
gies and manufacturing
processes.
b. Select server technology that
provides improved computing
performance per Watt of power
dissipation.
c. Increase efficiency of server
power supplies.
2. Optimize Data Centre Infrastruc-
ture - Offering more efficient
blade servers and cooling tech-
nologies.
a. Fully utilize existing computing
power through consolidation
onto fewer and higher perform-
ance systems.
b. Improve utilization of IT sys-
tems with virtualization tech-
nology.
3. Effective Use of Resources - De-
ploying more efficient blade
servers and cooling technologies
and are implementing IDC consol-
idation and virtualization.
a. Flexibly control power con-
sumption by means of dynamic
IT solutions
b. Actively seek the appropriate
balance between power costs
and optimal server performance
c. Reduce the energy costs to a
minimum by transforming static
data centres to a Dynamic Data
Centre by creating pools of com-
puter and storage resources that
are provided with applications-
on-demand.
d. Better utilization by combina-
tion of blade server with virtu-
alization methods and
technologies.
e. Integration of IT Management
tools to react faster to resource
allocation of servers.
f. Automated, intelligent informa-
tion life-cycle management strat-
egy (ILM) to put the data where
it consumes the least power is
key for an energy efficient stor-
age pool.
Time for clear direction anc action
Businesses today need to look at
their current and future telecom and
data networking requirements and
make the changes now in order to
reap the benefits in the future. By
consolidating services, organisations
will not only improve their carbon
footprint, they’ll also be able to make
cost and efficiency savings that will
improve the bottom line. si
siliconindia
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June 2010
Business: By Sanjit Chatterjee
The author is Director Global Marketing and Strategy,
REVE Systems Cable&Wireless Worldwide
Telecom Companies
Revive Value of the
Indian Paisa
V
isiting us during her va-
cations, Manjari, my
teenage niece, asked me
if I would help her with
a summer project. I
agreed. It involved the study of coins.
The curious kid wanted to know what
a one-paisa coin looked like. Her next
question: ‘What can one paisa buy?’
We were amused as to why a
teacher would give a ‘one paisa’ proj-
ect when the cheapest toffee costs 50
paisa, or around one cent. Manjari’s
search into the shape, size, and metal-
lic content of one paisa coin landed
her at the Reserve Bank of India’s
(RBI’s) monetary museum. She learnt
that over a period of time, the cost-
benefit considerations led to a grad-
ual discontinuance of 1, 2 and 3 paisa
coins in 1970s.
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June 2010
Then came a discovery of sorts.
There was something that was worth
a paisa — offered by the burgeoning,
yet highly competitive, Indian tele-
com industry. For just one paisa, one
can talk to someone in the farthest
corner of India for one second, or
send an SMS of 160 characters to any
one of the 600 million mobile phone
users in India. Not only that, one can
extract more from the service
provider if the bill plan is well cho-
sen. Of course, it also depends on the
desperation of the service provider to
acquire and retain a customer.
The Indian telecom industry, the
world’s fastest growing, must be cred-
ited with applying all the marketing
tricks ranging from product or service
sampling, marginal costing, happy
hours, family and friends packs among
others to hook the customer.
This explains the offer for send-
ing 15,000 SMSs for Rs.99 (around
$2) a month — a cool 3 SMSs for 2
paise. Or for just Rs.299 (around
$6.5) to call 65 hours, or full-hour of
talking with your mother for under
Rs.5 (11 cents). If your circle of
friends extends nationally, at Rs.599
($13.3) per month plan you can talk
for 65 hours, packing in 60 minutes
of calling for a little over Rs.9 ($2).
For the service provider there is little
money to be made in the local or long-
distance calls from and individual sub-
scriber. However, money is made from
value added services — ranging from
ring tones and astrology, music down-
loads and jokes, stock alerts to cricket
scores, International calls and data serv-
ices. It is estimated that there are at least
100 different services that add up to plum
value added services. There is hardly a
subscriber who has not subscribed to a
service or two at a minimum of Rs.15
(33 cents) per month.
If you include data services like
browsing the web to send email, down-
loading music or streaming video to
watch TV, the billing potential for the
mobile companies is huge and is likely
to grow manifold in the third generation
(3G) regime. By subscribing to data
packages on a mobile phone the sub-
scriber can navigate unknown routes or
even make international calls for a song.
While all 600 million Indian mobile
subscribers don’t own a handset that sup-
ports data services, it is only a matter of
time when some of the cheaper ‘copycat’
look-alike handsets — as market re-
According to a report by
Business Software Alliance,
global loss due to software
piracy has reached $51.4 bil-
lion in 2009, with $16.5 bil-
lion in the Asia-Pacific
region. Despite some achieve-
ments in the fight to protect
intellectual property rights,
43 percent of software used
in computers globally in
2009 was pirated. The over-
flow of counterfeits was
largely due to the growth of
the personal computers in the
emerging markets.
searcher, IDC calls them — will be
within every mobile user’s reach for as
little as one-tenth the average price of a
smart phone.
Industry analysts expect that a num-
ber of service providers could be offer-
ing mobile voice over internet protocol
(VoIP) services to offer cheap interna-
tional calls. Right now making interna-
tional calls is not only expensive it also
needs activation, often for a fee and a fat
security deposit. Once the mobile VoIP
services are available, the call rates could
drop from the current Rs.6.40 (14 cents)
per minute at the lower band to as low as
Re.1-Rs.2 (2-4 cents) per minute.
Already a few options like the iTel
Mobile Dialer Express available in the
market allow a phone subscriber to
make VoIP call from the mobile
phone. With the mass deployment of
Wi-Fi networks in many countries and
the introduction of cheap GPRS serv-
ice, calling from mobile set using VoIP
technology is getting popular.
The telecom tariffs in India, among
the lowest in the world, have silently
been making a visible difference at the
sociological level — you see it in a
bus, train or plane. At another level
there are mobile air space consumers
who are busy converting phone calls
from a primarily day time activity to a
24/7 activity.
With a variety of cheap night-time
calling packages on offer, it is not un-
common for friends to call each other
late into night and for much longer dura-
tions. With value offerings targeted in the
non-peak hours, the service providers
have been able to make inroads into the
sleeping hours of young student com-
munity successfully.
The time is not far when the mobile
revolution will embrace the remaining
half of the country — at a steady rate of
adding 20 million new mobile connec-
tions every month — in less than three
years. The economies of scale will hope-
fully extract the India demographic ad-
vantage for many more seconds at the
cost of a single paisa. si
siliconindia
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June 2010
CIO Profile: By Sanjay Sathe
The author is Founder and CEO, RiseSmart
Asking the
HR Meets Technology
Right Questions
E
ffective management
knows that people are the
lifeblood of any business;
talented employees are
by far a company’s most
valuable asset. Due to today’s dy-
namic workplace and the fast pace of
ever-changing business processes,
employers are increasingly turning to
technology and vendors to assist in
meeting the demands of outplacement
and recruitment. But as with any ven-
dor relationship, third parties you
choose to do business with must have
clear objectives, defined direction,
and accountability. Never is this more
important than when they are dealing
with the very heart of your organiza-
tion - your employees.
As an example, I would like to
discuss here how technology can and
should be leveraged in both outplace-
ment and recruitment to allow the
management of a company’s human
resources to be as measurable and ac-
countable as any other business ini-
tiative.
State of the Outplacement Industry
You may be aware of a recent Holly-
wood hit movie, Up in the Air, which
tackled a topic companies in general
don’t like to discuss: outplacement.
This is an industry that grew out of a
need to take care of employees even
after business climate forced layoffs.
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June 2010
This lack of visibility and account-
ability has left many employers won-
dering whether they actually receive
the benefits promised to them by their
outplacement consultants. Employers
are not doing enough to demand ac-
countability and results from their out-
placement vendors, including the most
important result of all - helping laid-
off employees find new jobs as
quickly as possible.
Driving Accountability with
Technology
But times are changing. It’s increas-
ingly clear that the old model of out-
While many HR practitioners tivity showed that the US employers placement is broken. Employees
were excited about the prospect of spent an average of nearly $3,600 per aren’t happy with it, and neither are
George Clooney portraying a member employee on outplacement services. employers.
of their profession, they largely have Once reserved for managers and ex- Fortunately, there are indications
been disappointed upon seeing the ecutives, these services are now typi- that more employers are demanding
film’s take on corporate layoffs and cally offered to employees at all accountability when it comes to out-
outplacement consultants. If you be- levels of the organization. placement. Three trends have con-
lieve the Hollywood version, ‘transi- To run these programs, the vast tributed to this development:
tion consultants’ offer little more than
majority of companies turn to outside 1. As large employers expand out-
glib pep talks and thin ‘packets’ of consulting firms. This is a big reason placement services to their entire
dubious value to laid-off workers. that transition management has employee population, the cost of
emerged as a $3 billion in- services has increased – and
HR vendors you choose to do dustry in the past decade. measuring results has become a
higher priority.
business with must have clear intentions And yet, for all the good
of employers, the 2. As more small and medium sized
objectives, defineddirection results delivered by out- businesses offer outplacement
and accountability
placement programs have support, they tend to be more con-
been mixed. In the Wall cerned with the hard benefits than
Street Journal story of Au- the soft benefits of outside con-
This is certainly not the case in gust 20, 2009, ‘Outplacement Firms sulting services.
real life. Today, four out of five em- Struggle to Do Job’, journalists Phred 3. Technology is making it easier for
ployers offer substantive outplace- Dvorak and Joann S. Lublin make the outplacement firms to deliver
ment services, ranging from career case that traditional outplacement measurable and cost-effective re-
coaching and resume help to the iden- service packages – such as grief sults to employers of all sizes.
tification of job leads, for weeks or counseling, group seminars, and the The creative leveraging of tech-
months after qualifying displaced em- use of office space – ‘offer little nology, in fact, is critical to increasing
ployees for the program. But many value’ to workers and leave many both employee and employer satisfac-
displaced employees are unhappy feeling dissatisfied. Since the tion with outplacement services.
with the assistance they receive, and methodology behind user surveys is
for good reason. flawed, some companies never know Technology Can Positively Impact
In recent surveys in the U.S. and that their former employees didn’t Recruitment
the UK, approximately 80 percent of find jobs. By some estimates, 40 per- When it comes to recruitment, your
employers said they offer outplace- cent of displaced workers who were human resources division will tell you,
ment support, up significantly from offered outplacement services don’t if you didn’t already know, that the
just a few years ago. A 2009 survey use them at all – let alone participate process can be very difficult and long,
by the Institute for Corporate Produc- in satisfaction surveys. and the ability to know for certain
whether a candidate who seems like an can offer this to clients, if they are chosen
excellent fit for the job will indeed based on their ability to deliver results,
have longevity with your company is and they are given clear direction as to
akin to having one’s own crystal ball. the collective goal.
A Formula for Accountability
Technology has the ability to
Technology makes accounta-
bility in outplacement and re-
change the recruiting cruitment services more
landscape by finding a wider accessible. However, it is still
incumbent upon employers to
pool of talent,reducing expect – and demand – results.
time-to-hire, and significantly This means that the employer
bringing down costs
should construct a model by
which to measure the ROI of
its outplacement and recruit-
The complaints that many compa- ment services provider.
nies have about using third-party re- While every employer’s situation is
cruiters, however, involves the quality of unique, companies that wish to assess the
the talent they receive through their performance of their current outplace-
doors, the lack of communication, and ment firm – or determine which firm to
the expense. Certainly, this current eco- choose during a selection process –
nomic climate has precipitated an em- should be asking the following questions:
ployer’s market; skilled talent is out there 1. Is this firm’s thinking in line with
and looking for new positions. The diffi- my strategic business objectives?
culty with an economy on the upswing, 2. What is the measurement of success,
particularly for cost-conscious busi- and does this vendor have the capa-
nesses, though, is that employees might bility to show me an effective meas-
jump ship once the market for their job urement?
skills opens up and other positions be- 3. In what timeframe does this project
come available. need to be completed? Does this
As I mentioned, no one has that crys- firm have the capability to execute
tal ball. But the best way to mitigate that within that window?
risk is to start with a wide and diversified 4. How, and how often, will this ven-
pool of talent in the selection process and dor be communicating with my
a third-party vendor who focuses on ac- team?
countability and considers you a priority 5. How are my costs determined? How
client. Also, find ways to reduce your does that compare with my intended
cost of on-boarding, using technology to ROI?
shorten the time-to-hire and by closely 6. Is there a guarantee associated with
investigating often large fees charged by their work? Do they guarantee to
some recruiters. Will it cost you 25 per- support impacted employees until
cent of a $70,000 salary in recruiting fees the employees find jobs?
to hire a new person to fill that position? Do they guarantee to fill – and keep
That’s more than $17,000. What if you filled – the open position for which you
had to do that twice – or even three times contracted their help in recruiting?
- in one year? The truth is that there are vendors
The truth is that technology, when who can become as integral to your
properly leveraged, has the ability to business as your on-site employees. But
change the recruiting landscape by find- it requires asking the right questions and
ing a wider pool of talent, reducing time- demanding accountability. Those who
to-hire, and significantly bringing down can show you that measurement will be
costs. There are vendors out there who glad that you asked. si
siliconindia
|29|
June 2010
Technology: BySubhash K Parameswaran
The author is General Manager – Offshore Operations, UST Global
S
ocial networking is replac-
ing several traditional
forms of contact manage-
ment through its ability to
quickly create significant
impact on targeted populations. The
recent decision by Pepsi to avoid
Super Bowl advertising to focus on so-
cial networking advertising is an ex-
ample. Even though some attempts
have been made by a few health insur-
ance companies, enough attention has
not been paid to the use of social net-
working sites in this direction. With
increasing healthcare costs ruling the
headlines these days, it is important
that healthcare companies evaluate the
use of social networking features to
promote preventive care.
Why Focus on Preventive
Healthcare?
Most healthcare debates focus on how
to reduce the administrative costs in-
curred by the insurance companies.
siliconindia
|30| June 2010
Preventive
Healthcare Through
Social
Networking
However, insurance companies claim
that about 85 percent of their premium
revenues go back into paying for serv-
ices and only 15 percent of the total
revenue is spent on administration
overhead and profits. Hence, even a
People can share
specific diet plans,
common exercise
options, and other
lifestyle traits that will
help in controlling the
disease through social
networking sites
small percentage of reduction in the
service provider costs can significantly
reduce the overall price of healthcare.
Lifestyle choices and proper preven-
tive health measures can significantly
reduce the number of incidents for
members, thus contributing to the cost
savings.
How Does Social Networking Help
in Improving Preventive
Healthcare?
It has been proven in the past, by the
likes of Weight Watchers Clubs, that
social pressure definitely helps to im-
prove lifestyle. A large percentage of
the population may not wish to dis-
close their weight or eating habits to
the public, or even to friends. But the
anonymity offered in these forums will
very likely improve the participation
and produce impressive results. A few
such applications of social networking
in improving overall health of mem-
bers are discussed below.
Sharing of Health Tips
Create a social networking site where
members can share tips on health and
wellness. The content can be moni-
tored by qualified physicians for accu-
racy and also to ensure that the
comments are appropriate. These
physicians can also append their own
suggestions on the tips. Information
such as calories contained in common
foods, recommended portions for spe-
cific diets, and easy cures for common
illnesses can also be shared through
this site. Magazines already provide
similar columns by physicians and this
would be more attractive on a website.
Chronic Disease Specific Commu-
nities
Communities can be created within
social networking sites for people
suffering from chronic diseases such
as diabetes. These can be promoted
through organizations such as the
American Diabetes Association and
can provide information specific to
better living conditions of patients.
For example, people can share spe-
cific diet plans, common exercise op-
tions, and other lifestyle traits that
will help in controlling the disease.
Members can also share their own
experiences with treatments and the
long-term impacts that they are fac-
ing. New research and findings re-
garding such diseases can gain
publicity through the site.
Preventive Care Reminders
As an incentive for people who sign
up to such sites, insurance compa-
nies can offer preventive care re-
minders, such as for annual
check-ups, vaccinations for kids,
and breast examinations for women.
Members can share anecdotes of
how preventive care events helped
them in identifying problems during
early stages and in getting timely
treatment. The forum can also have
discussions on common symptoms
and suggestions on when to seek
professional help and treatments.
The healthy baby initiative from
Aetna is an example of such a pro-
gram and it can be extended to social
networking sites. There could also
be reminders on prescription refills
The networking sites
help people maintain
anonymity while
disclosing personal
health information and
seeking and sharing
health tips
and even text messages that remind
patients to take medication on time.
Lifestyle Communities (joggers,
weight watchers, anti-smoking
groups)
These communities can provide a
medium for people with common in-
terests to motivate each other. This
is based on the principle of Weight
Watchers Clubs where peer pressure
helps people achieve difficult tar-
gets. Users can share and get infor-
mation anonymously.
Provider Reviews
Social networking sites can be a
platform for the members to discuss
their experiences with healthcare
providers. This will also help the in-
surance companies reduce costs
when they are able to direct mem-
bers to specific providers who can
provide better and or cheaper serv-
ices. User feedback on the site will
IT spending across all indus-
try markets in 2010 will in-
crease up to 4.1 percent,
exceeding $2.4 trillion. As
per the Gartner report, IT
spending in the banking and
securities market will re-
bound to $396.9 billion in
2010, a 4.6 percent increase
from 2009.
also make sure that provider services
undergo continuous improvement.
Games with A Theme on Reducing
Healthcare Costs
With some creative thinking, games
can be developed to keep a high in-
terest level among members to visit
these sites often. Similar to the fa-
mous Facebook game of ‘Farmville’,
a game can be developed where the
players get points for healthy behav-
ior such as exercise and quitting to-
bacco. This will lure the members to
visit the site more often and also
help promote the ideas of preventive
healthcare in a fun way to encourage
better lifestyles.
Challenges to Consider
While the idea sounds promising,
several challenges need to be con-
sidered. There could be legal issues
regarding the nature of comments
posted by the participants and so ap-
propriate legal precautions and
guidelines need to be incorporated
into the site. Any information or
comment that could damage the rep-
utation of a service provider may in-
vite more legal challenges and
lawsuits. Privacy and security con-
cerns could also be discouraging fac-
tors for implementing these ideas.
Another challenge is to attract
the right kind of audience to this
website. The social media generation
of today may not be too worried
about health at this time and the
older generation may not be social
media savvy.
Conclusion
Even with all the challenges, there
are some good opportunities for the
companies that are first movers in
this area - higher participation and
retention of members. In short, the
early birds in implementing this
technology will be able to attract a
section of the younger generation to
their fold. si
siliconindia
|31|
June 2010
Technology: By Rajesh Parthasarathy
The author is Founder, MENTIS Software
Threat is Internal
Information Breachthe
M
any define sensi-
tive information as
personal or corpo-
rate data like social
security numbers
or credit card numbers or sales fig-
ures. But sensitive information is
any data asset that you have a fidu-
ciary responsibility to protect, and
there is a gamut of them - from per-
sonal information, corporate infor-
mation, customer and vendor
information, to intellectual property.
All of this is stored in enterprise-
wide relational databases and appli-
cations.
Applications and databases were
architected in a more carefree, less
security-conscious era. They simply
aren't built to protect data. In fact,
they are built to make access to data
easier. But the real issue is that it’s
extremely difficult to know where
all of the sensitive information actu-
siliconindia
|32| June 2010
Applications and databases were
architected in a more carefree, less
security-conscious era and so they
simply aren't built to protect data
ally is located within those data-
bases and applications.
When these databases and appli-
cations were designed, organiza-
tions wanted to share information,
both internally and externally. This
resulted in deployment of enter-
prise-wide relational databases with
complex data models and architec-
tures. The vendors don’t document
the locations of sensitive informa-
tion – primarily because they don’t
know what data is sensitive for a
given organization.
Since you cannot secure data if
you don’t know where it is, you
have to locate all of the places that
the database or application has des-
ignated for storage and map it to
your application security and other
access controls. But there’s an
Achilles’ heel to this process and
this is where the risk of data expo-
sure becomes acute, which is un-
documented locations of sensitive
information.
For a very long time, informa-
tion was put into databases and ap-
plications without worrying about
exposure. For example, at one of our
client sites, we found all the em-
ployees’ social security numbers in
a table where the payroll clerk had
copied them in order to simplify the
check writing process. This was not
just a few numbers; it was thousands
of them in an undocumented, un-
known, and totally unexpected loca-
tion. Another example is of a
developer creating a payables report
that included vendor tax codes and
addresses - a breach of several pri-
vacy acts.
Most of us do not even realize
that we have a problem or do not un-
derstand the magnitude of it. One of
our customers was expecting to find
social security numbers in 17 places
– but ran our discovery process and
found upwards of 100 locations.
What surprised them was not just
the number of locations but how
much of it was systemic – based on
how their application and database
logic was written.
So ‘ discovery’ is important not
only for locations, but to understand
how and why the data gets propa-
gated. One has to know their risks.
There are many reasons why infor-
mation gets exposed and discover-
ing all sensitive information
locations in extremely critical. Con-
firming and documenting all loca-
tions helps organizations understand
their needs to fully protect their
data. In fact, we felt this discovery
to be so critical that we built it into
MENTIS Framework, the engine
that runs our solutions, the founda-
tion for our platform suite. It is im-
portant to regularly discover
sensitive information as your appli-
cations and databases change, to
maintain full awareness of where
your information is going and why.
Only then can you fully protect it.
A common perception amongst
most is that external attacks are the
biggest threat; but according to the
FBI security survey more than 70
percent of breaches are internal.
One needs to understand what a
breach is. It can be as benign as a
All of the places
that the database
or application has
designated for
storage has to be
located and
mapped to set
your application
security and other
access controls
developer unknowingly extracting
confidential information while cre-
ating a new report. Regardless of in-
tent, one has already breached a
number of laws.
Data breaches are a constant oc-
currence. In fact, since first January
this year, over 100 breaches have
been made public in the United
As per Nasscom estimates,
Indian IT and BPO sectors
may get $10 billion from Ger-
many, Switzerland and Aus-
tria by 2020, more than $2.6
billion earned from the re-
gions across the IT, BPO and
engineering services against
the market size of over $53
billion. The IT services mar-
ket in the Germanic countries
is estimated to be $100 bil-
lion, of which about $5.6 bil-
lion worth of services are
offshored and out of that al-
most $1.4 billion comes to
India.
States alone. Theses breaches range
from those affecting a few records
to the exposure of over 3 million
records.
For a company, the cost of these
breaches could be astronomical.
Penalties by state governments are
increasing, but the costs of credit
monitoring services and lawsuits are
extremely high. A breach can cost
anywhere from $45 to $300 per
record. The average cost of a breach
in the US is $6.75 million. And that
doesn’t even include the intangible
costs — lost business, cancelled
contracts, and so on. More than one
company has actually had to fold
due to this. In fact, the average cus-
tomer attrition due to these reasons
is 32 percent. Stockholder value is
hit accordingly.
Our sensitive information man-
agement platform provides a com-
prehensive suite of tools to identify,
protect, and manage sensitive infor-
mation in production and non-pro-
duction databases and applications.
We automate the discovery process
for specific applications and data-
bases and have pre-built controls for
auditing, masking, monitoring, and
reporting for rapid deployment in
multiple environments. It’s our ap-
proach – we have a comprehensive
platform for sensitive information
management. We don’t provide just
a piece of the puzzle. The MENTIS
solution is an integrated suite that
includes discovery, masking, moni-
toring, and intrusion prevention – all
the products to help customers pro-
tect their information throughout its
life in their organizations. We de-
signed them to be modular and scal-
able. Companies can start out with
one or two products and can add
products to protect more databases
and applications as their needs
change, as legislation changes, and
as their company grows. si
siliconindia
|33| June 2010
Management: By Nanda Ramanujam
The author is Sr. Project Manager, Axentis Software
Fostering Productivity and
M
Organizational Effectiveness Via
Employee Engagement
easuring knowledge
worker productivity
and in turn finding
out how it con-
tributes to an organi-
zation’s overall effectiveness is a
difficult proposition, though it is not im-
possible. The rewards of doing so are
twofold. Measurement allows the exec-
utive management to help an organiza-
tion to guide and direct its valuable
human capital towards the goals that
have been identified and set. In turn, the
ability to better manage knowledge
workers opens the door to new and in-
novative ways to foster their loyalty, cre-
ativity, and productivity.
So, What is Organization Effective-
ness?
siliconindia
|34|
June 2010
This isn’t limited to just productivity,
though it certainly encompasses it. Pro-
ductivity is defined narrowly as the
amount of physical output for each unit
of productive input, which has been a
human concern for centuries. The prob-
lem comes in defining output for non-
manufacturing, service activities
commonly termed as ‘knowledge
work’, these include IT services and
products, transportation, retail and Lo-
gistics, and finance and Insurance re-
lated services rendered to individuals
and businesses.
Who Contributes to Organization
Effectiveness?
Each and every employee contributes to
organization effectiveness. Taking into
account the skills, experience, and rank
some play a bigger role than others. Es-
tablishing a successful and sustainable
organization takes more than manage-
ment expertise. It requires genuine lead-
ership – the ability to guide individuals
and teams to their highest level of col-
laboration, innovation, and effective-
ness. Today’s leaders play many roles:
visionary, role model, architect, de-
fender of values, team builder, coach,
change agent, strategist, economist, and
advocate for excellence. While produc-
tivity and economics are always an
issue, today’s leaders also understand
the importance of creating a values-dri-
ven vision that becomes the benchmark
for individual and organizational deci-
sion making. Leaders seek best practices
that produce integrity, adaptability, sus-
tainability, and execution.
What is your organization’s ‘cre-
ativity quotient?’ – A hands-on
practicum for enhancing creativity and
critical thinking in the workplace that
fosters new perspectives and habits of
thinking.
Employee Engagement
Engagement is much more than attrac-
tion, retention, or commitment. Engaged
employees are passionate about their
work, proud of their organization, and
are generally enthusiastic about coming
to work each day. Engaged employees
are emotionally connected to their work,
and are willing to ‘go the extra mile’ to
bring success to the organization. A
highly engaged and motivated work-
force can reflect the company’s core val-
ues, which ultimately strengthens the
overall company brand.
Aspects of Employee Engagement
There are three basic aspects of em-
ployee engagement according to the
global studies:
1. The employees and their own
unique psychological makeup and
experience
2. The employers and their ability to
create the conditions that promote
employee engagement
3. Interaction between employees at all
levels
Thus it is largely the organization’s re-
sponsibility to create an environment and
culture conducive to this partnership, and
a win-win equation.
Employees are most effective at
work when their strongest personal traits
are engaged. They also need to discover
their most favorable ways of functioning
at workplace. Another critical factor, sub-
ordinate-supervisor relationship, is also
linked to employee development. Abil-
ity to effectively cope with stress is an-
other important factor. There are some
assessments that can help managers to
understand the abilities of their employ-
ees, their preferred work style, and how
to motivate and how to develop their po-
tentials. The ultimate benefit to individu-
als completing the assessment as well as
the managers is learning the ways to be
more effective, efficient, and fulfilled at
work. Employees become more engaged
when expectations between employees
and employers are aligned, this balance is
often found through the creation of an
employee value proposition. An em-
ployee value proposition is the mutual
expectations and promises that are
agreed on from both the sides.
How to Improve Employee Engage-
ment
Engaged employees are not naturally
born, but can be developed by organiza-
tional support and best practices. It is im-
portant to have engagement methods
aligned with employee value proposi-
tions. Organizations that believe in in-
creasing employee engagement levels
focus on:
Culture: It consists of a foundation of
leadership, vision, values, effective com-
munication, a strategic plan, and HR
policies that are focused on the em-
ployee.
Continuous Reinforcement of People-
Focused Policies: Continuous reinforce-
ment exists when senior management
Fostering employee
engagement is the
ability to guide indi-
viduals and teams to
their highest level of
collaboration,
innovation, and
effectiveness
provides the staff with the budgets and
resources to accomplish their work and
empowers them.
Organizational Performance: It ulti-
mately leads to high levels of trust, pride,
satisfaction, success, and believe it or not,
fun.
Increasing Employee engagement
 Provide a variety of challenging op-
portunities that stimulate the em-
ployees’ creative quotient: Tedious,
repetitive, mundane tasks can cause
burn out and boredom over time. If
the job requires repetitive tasks, look
for ways to introduce variety by ro-
tating duties, areas of responsibility,
delivery of service, and so on.
 Conduct periodic meetings with em-
ployees to communicate good news,
challenges, and easy-to-understand
company financial information.
Managers and supervisors should be
comfortable communicating with
their staff, and able to give and re-
ceive constructive feedback.
 Indulge in employee re-deployment
if he feels he is not on the right job.
Provide an open environment.
 Communicate openly and clearly
about what’s expected of employees
at every level - your vision, priorities,
success measures.
 Get to know the employees’ interests,
goals, their stress factors, show an in-
terest in their well-being, and do
what it takes to enable them to feel
more fulfilled and better balanced in
work and life.
 Celebrate individual, team, and orga-
nizational successes. Catch the em-
ployees doing something right, and
say ‘thank you’.
 Be consistent in your support for en-
gagement initiatives. If you start one
and then drop it, your efforts may
backfire. There’s a strong connection
between the employees’ commit-
ment to an initiative and the manage-
ment’s commitment to supporting it.
Footnote
Worker effectiveness measurements are
based on human behavior, these metrics
are intangibles and measure issues such
as fostering innovation, enhancing com-
munication, encouraging learning, im-
proving work process, expediting
decision making, understanding and ad-
dressing the needs of employees, and at-
tracting and retaining talented workforce.
An organization’s capacity to manage
employee engagement is closely related
to its ability to achieve high performance
levels and superior business results.
Some of the advantages of engaged
employees are
 Engaged employees will stay with
the company, be advocates of the
company and its products and serv-
ices, and contribute to bottomline
business success.
 They will normally perform better
and are more motivated.
 They form an emotional connection
with the company. This impacts their
attitude towards the company’s
clients and thereby improves cus-
tomer satisfaction and service levels
 It builds passion, commitment, and
alignment with the organization’s
strategies and goals
 Increases employees’ trust in the or-
ganization
 Creates a sense of loyalty in a com-
petitive environment
 Provides a high energy working en-
vironment
 Boosts business growth
 Makes the employees effective brand
ambassadors of the company si
siliconindia
|35| June 2010

Business: By R.Subramanya
The author is Associate Vice President, Educampus
Entrepreneurship
Rewards
I
dentify a need and fill it is the
business mantra today. It calls
for a certain ability to understand
requirements and match the
standards of produce for the cus-
tomer. The measure product require-
ment in the market, people orientation
must be properly scaled and a study of
inclination to buy the product at rea-
sonable costs must be made. Research
on its utility, acceptance, weaknesses,
and competition must be identified and
practically addressed.
tTwo kinds of people cohabit the
world of business. The normal business
psyche markedly differs from the em-
ployee mindset. Employees are con-
cerned with career, position, increment,
and a good take home salary; and they
Scaling down or scaling up of a business are
strategic decisions and are not stagnant processes
confined to boundaries of management
do not go beyond. Ambitions are lim-
ited and have boundary lines.
The business oriented people have a
pattern of interests and the manifold vi-
sion and mission seem to be superior in
the thought process and functioning
style. One with the orientation of busi-
ness not only thinks of money, but his
thoughts extend beyond personal
growth. The strategy is to live with
good employees, build higher infra-
structure, produce a superior product
siliconindia
|36| June 2010
&
line, win competition, and finally be the
backbone of the country’s sustained
economics.
Entrepreneurship invariably has a
sense of independence culminating into
a desire; a desire to achieve in spite of
obstacles and constraints, constantly
desiring to be successful. With this
comes a state of mind, which becomes
strong with every passing day. This de-
sire will sustain all hardships.
The first generation entrepreneurs
are those who will have crossroads of
anxieties, personal dilemmas, and con-
flicting ideas of birth and death of busi-
ness models. They have the real spirit
of adventure and a diehard attitude.
Some succeed and continue to win,
while some meet with an untimely end.
The success and failure in business
although is very transient, the qualities
and personal markings that an entre-
preneur must cultivate are imminent,
and let us examine them.
Attributes: Doing business does not
mean that one has to be equipped with
high qualifications. Qualities of ag-
gressiveness, social exposure, network-
ing, street smartness, ability to grasp
things quickly, being good at mental
mathematics, and the ability to think
laterally and find solutions are the most
important hallmarks of intelligence that
are required to become successful in
business. Above all, a person must have
marketing abilities.
Attitudes: Patience and perseverance
are essential attributes in doing busi-
ness, the ability to compromise when
things are down and striving for better-
ment in future are qualities of merit.
Scaling down or scaling up are strategic
decisions and are not stagnant
processes confined to boundaries of
management.
Business Ethics: Business ethics and
value systems need to be in place, with-
out which the foundations will become
weak over a period of time. An organi-
zation with staunch value systems and
practices would certainly consolidate
its brand image and brand equity. Com-
panies gain reputation by virtue of ag-
grandizing customer faith and public
interests, nurturing and cultivating best
business practices.
Human Value Systems: A strong
HRM is a deciding platform, or the
root, of any organization; it has to
have fair practices, be six sigma prin-
ciple driven, and keep up ethical val-
ues. Traditional companies have been
very successful in consolidating
human resources as opposed to non-
traditional companies, which, in the
name of innovation and rational ap-
proach invite more trouble.
Crisis and Risk Management: Mini-
mizing threats, maximizing benefits,
and the ability to handle crisis in or-
ganizations are other great attributes.
Defining the problem or issue, looking
for alternatives, methodology to resolve
crisis, freezing best alternatives, and
implementing orders conceived by
these efforts are basic requirements.
Risk management should be value
driven, an integral part of organiza-
tional process, should lead to focused
elimination of uncertainties, and deci-
sions need to be taken on the basis of
factual information and be tailored.
Franchise Business Opportunities
The modern business opens up innu-
merable opportunities for the discern-
ing entrepreneur; one such opportunity
could be the franchise model. A suc-
cessful business with established brand
equity may offer franchise in selected
areas and in your location. Here, the
business model built is preconceived
and meditated to generate business
from day one of operations. All that one
has to do is to strictly follow the defined
disciplines and comply with internal
and external mechanisms. There will be
a detailed franchise orientation and
product or service trainings, and one
must learn it from the roots.
Defined clientele and expected
ROI, from familiar boundary lines are
the advantages in this model. Leverag-
ing brand capitalization business edge,
with no need for extra intelligence, the
principal franchisor will have every-
thing in place and one has to learn
everything with patience and persever-
ance.
The market survey, competitor ac-
tivities, and tests and trials are all being
taken care of by the franchisor. It’s with
this franchise model that good compa-
nies garnish further growth and capi-
talize markets. Name any FMCG brand
today; they will have surely taken the
franchise business model for their mar-
keting strategy.
In this scope and venue, young cap-
Entrepreneurship does not rest at the doorsteps of
businessmen but extends its benefits to larger
public welfare. It eases unemployment in the
country and creates new frontiers of employment
opportunities
italists can take maximum opportunity
to start a business, with the assurance
of guaranteed and measured business
outlay and strategies.
MNC brands, who are onto the
franchise business model, will have
very defined structures in conducting
their business, advertising strategies,
marketing techniques, promotional
campaigns, and events. Customer
services will be clearly defined and
practiced. Their training camps for ap-
pointed franchisees comprise of all the
facets of business management. In
short, franchise business being a time-
tested and proven model can assuredly
generate business, with the least
amount of efforts and low turnaround
time. Quality assurance and supervi-
sion will be slated at every stage of the
product and best quality of product is
guaranteed. Consumers will have as-
sorted international brand choice and
satisfaction.
IT spending across all indus-
try markets in 2010 will in-
crease up to 4.1 percent,
exceeding $2.4 trillion. As
per the Gartner report, IT
spending in the banking and
securities market will re-
bound to $396.9 billion in
2010, a 4.6 percent increase
from 2009.
Sir M.Vishweshwaraiah once said
‘Industrialize or perish’. He saw such
great need for India to become self suf-
ficient, and encouraged total industrial
revolution. Entrepreneurship does not
rest at the doorsteps of businessmen but
extends its benefits to a larger public
welfare and society. It eases unemploy-
ment in the country and creates new
frontiers of employment opportunities.
Jawaharlal Nehru contended once
saying: As long as there are tears and
suffering, so long our work is not over.
He advised us to sacrifice, focus our ef-
forts, and to strive hard in removing
poverty and hunger.
India today is Asia’s fast growing
developed economy, advancing faster
on the global scenario to become a
super power. India's per capita income
(an indicator of collective prosperity)
is $1,124, ranked 139th in the world,
while its per capita (PPP) of $3,176 is
ranked at 128th place. Previously a
closed economy, India's trade has
grown fast in the past two decades.
India currently accounts for 1.5 percent
of world trade according to the WTO.
After taking inflation into account, the
per capita income is estimated to grow
by 5.4 percent to Rs. 33,540 this fiscal
against Rs. 31,821 during 2008-09.
Last fiscal, it grew by 5 percent.
The future of India lies with its
young, strong-willed entrepreneurs
and the spirit with which this com-
munity takes off decides the future
standing of this great nation. For the
young and agile entrepreneurs multi-
skilled and tailored entrepreneurship
development courses, distance learn-
ing, and e-learning methodologies are
now open. si
siliconindia
|37|
June 2010
Re
Technology: By Shiv Kumar
The author is Executive Vice-President, Business Development,
Zylog Systems
The Emergence of
Eco-Friendly Computing
I
Staggering Statistics:
n U.S., the Data Centers ac-
counted for 61 billion kWh or
approx 1.5 percent of the Na-
tion’s electricity consumption.
This usage is equivalent to the
consumption of approximately 6
million U.S. households with the es-
timated figure of 12 percent increase
annually according to the study re-
port from the EPA.
The report puts a tremendous re-
sponsibility on the IT industry to
adopt the Green IT initiatives more
seriously and make the IT infra-
structure as ‘Eco-Friendly’ or ‘En-
ergy Efficient’.
The EPA reports that energy
usage in data centers doubled be-
tween 2000 and 2006 and is pre-
dicted to double again by 2011,
hence the interest in energy effi-
ciency.
Business leaders searching for a
green strategy encounter few
roadmaps and established rules and
plenty of hidden twists and turns.
siliconindia
|38| June 2010
duce
use
cycle
Emerging Standards
The Energy Star Version 5.0 standard
provides guidance for choosing en-
ergy-efficient equipment, including
Network devices, PC and Laptops,
workstations, small-scale servers, and
thin clients. To earn the Energy Star
Version 5.0 label, the computing de-
vices must meet the set power con-
sumption criteria.
The IT infrastructure managers
and Technology Manufacturers look-
ing for greener alternatives will begin
to benefit this year from a major ini-
tiative aimed at reducing the power
consumed by Ethernet device- IEEE
802.3az, or the Energy-Efficient Eth-
ernet (EEE) standard, will implement
low-power idle (LPI) modes for the
full range of Ethernet BASE-T trans-
ceivers (100Mb, 1GbE and 10GbE)
and the backplane physical layer stan-
dards (1GbE, 4-lane 1GbE and
10GbE).
The Electronic Product Environ-
mental Assessment Tool (EPEAT)
goes further in providing guidance to
select environmentally friendly elec-
tronic device or equipment. In addition
to requiring Energy Star rating,
EPEAT registration evaluates comput-
ing device based on further criteria in-
cluding materials selection and
composition, life cycle considerations,
end-of-life design and management,
and packaging. EPEAT registers prod-
ucts at Bronze, Silver, and Gold levels
according to how many of the optional
criteria they meet on top of the 23 re-
quired criteria.
Virtualization and Cloud clean the
Carbon
Virtualization, cloud computing, data
center optimization and legacy modern-
ization are the major focus areas for the
IT organizations globally since the eco-
nomic meltdown.
Cost savings and IT infrastructure
consolidation are driving the Green IT
agenda at the moment. The shrinking IT
budget is also causing IT to reconsider
how to run things more cost effectively
as we continue to do more with less .
Virtualization clearly offers the
promise of better resource utilization
and lower operating expense. En-
ergy-Star servers, outside air econo-
mizers and the like offer true green
advantages.
A recent survey of IT Managers
worldwide about their environmental
strategies indicates about 54 percent
admitted that cloud computing is
now part of their overall environ-
mental strategy. And over 21percent
of IT managers believe that cloud
computing is a much greener alterna-
tive to traditional computing infra-
structures, but it seems that the vast
majority still remain to be convinced.
Green Client Computing – Power
Savior
The benefits of efficient Client Com-
puting through desktop virtualization
and print management creates signif-
icant impact on the energy. Longer
PC lifecycles and more efficient
power usage are other desktop virtu-
alization benefits.
Hosted virtual desktops continue to
garner significant market attention. Or-
ganizations considering their deploy-
ment can minimize cost and risks by
following implementation best prac-
tices outlined by the industry experts.
Desktop Virtualization technol-
ogy will help in extending the life-
time of the Desktops by stretching
the PC refresh cycle to reduce the
load on already overtaxed landfills.
Avoid sending hazardous materials
to those landfills, old systems and
supplies can be reused, repurposed,
and/or recycled.
Green Client Computing is a
combination of strategies and initia-
tives that reduce the environmental
footprint of IT infrastructure. This
arises from reductions in energy use
and consumables, including hard-
ware, power, and paper and extend-
ing the equipments lifetime
—among others. Because of these
reductions, Green IT initiatives also
produce cost savings in energy use,
purchases, management and sup-
port, in addition to environmental
benefits. Beyond cost savings and
environmental benefits, some initia-
tives may address stakeholder and
regulatory needs and demands.
Green Journey
Green computing is a continuous
journey and everyone is responsible
to play their role to make computing
‘greener’ with the optimized energy
usage to operate the electronic de-
vices and mushrooming professional
gadgets at work place. Such prac-
tices include the implementation of
energy-efficient Servers and Acces-
sories or Peripherals as well as re-
duced resource consumption and
proper disposal of electronic waste
(e-waste).
Green IT is taking on a bigger
role for many reasons, including an
increased awareness of environmen-
tal danger; concern about power
bills; regulatory requirements; gov-
ernment procurement rules; and a
sense that corporations should em-
brace social responsibility.
Since IT is still responsible for
2% of all carbon releases, IT man-
agers should put best practices in
place to
 Optimize the Power usage with
the proper Power Management
software
 Actively manage the desktop or
laptop power settings
 Modernize the Data Center by
Virtualizing the Servers, Desk-
tops and Applications
 Mandate the purchase of energy
efficient computing devices
 Establishes energy measurement
and take the responsibility to
monitor the energy usage
Remember to Reduce ... Reuse
...Recycle... si
siliconindia
|39| June 2010
Technology: By Daniel Burrus
The author is Technology forecasters and business strategists
Economy
How to Use Technology to Redefine
T
oday we’re in an era of
technology-driven trans-
formation. That means
you can attain higher prof-
its when you use technol-
ogy to redefine your products, your
services, and/or how the industry in
general works.
Unfortunately, most companies are
using technology only one way – to
lower costs and become more effi-
cient. They view technology as a way
to “do more with less,” “streamline the
workflow,” and “trim expenses.”
Sound familiar?
While that is certainly one good use
of technology, you can also use it to re-
define the marketplace as well as your
products and services. In this case,
technology becomes a tool of creation.
You can create new products, new serv-
ices, and entire new markets, which
then creates new jobs and careers.
Why is this important? Currently
the United States is digging out of the
worst recession since the 1930s, and
the global economy is suffering its
siliconindia
|40|
June 2010
Today’s
worst setback in decades. The key to
recovering is all about jobs and how to
create them. You don’t create jobs by
increasing productivity; you create
jobs by creating new products, serv-
ices, and markets. So even though we
have a statistical recovery, we have a
human recession. As such, recovery
can’t be jobless.
The bottom line is that we can use
technology to eliminate jobs or create
them. It’s time for businesses to focus
on redefining as a tool for job creation.
If you’re ready to start redefining your
company so you can grow your busi-
ness and stay profitable as you create
jobs for years to come, consider the fol-
lowing guidelines.
Know Where You’re Going
Look at your product, service, or in-
dustry and see how you can use tech-
nology to redefine it. The classic
example is Amazon.com. When they
first started the business, they used
technology to redefine how people sell
books. But they didn’t stop there. They
then expanded to other products and
redefined how nearly everything is
sold. Then they redefined again. They
developed a large IT, logistics, and
warehouse system and they now rent
out their enterprise IT platform and
warehousing space to other compa-
nies. So they are not only redefining
an industry; they’re also redefining
themselves.
Another example is Apple. Back in
early 2000, before they launched the
iPod and iPhone, most people thought
Apple was quickly going out of busi-
ness. That’s when the company rede-
fined themselves around music. Later
they redefined again with the iPhone,
which is telecommunications. Now
they’re doing it again with the iPad,
which will launch another revolution
as they redefine ebook readers and
media players. Like Amazon.com,
Apple has redefined themselves as
well as their industry.
So when it comes to your company
and your industry, ask yourself some
key questions, such as:
 What is growing and what is
shrinking?
 Where is the direction of the fu-
ture going based on technology?
(For example, getting more en-
ergy efficient and going green are
both long-term trends. Virtual
marketing and social networking
also represent long-term trends.)
Based on where your customers

and your industry are going, is
there a way to use technology to
create new opportunities?
Understand How Technology is Af-
fecting Your Customers
Look at how technology is affecting
your customers in your industry
right now. But don’t just look at pro-
ductivity. Look at the overall cus-
tomer experience as well as who is
buying your offerings. For example,
in the late 1970s, when ultra light
aviation was born, the first ultra light
aircrafts were basically hang-gliders
with engines. The FAA decided, due
to the size and weight of the plane,
people didn’t need a pilot’s license
to fly an ultra light aircraft. As a re-
sult, the first ultra light manufactur-
ers targeted that demographic –
people who wanted to fly but who
didn’t have the time or money to get
a pilot’s license. One company, Ul-
traSports, thought they could attract
a better customer, so they asked,
“Why not redefine the product, the
customer, and the market?”
Rather than target those who
wanted to fly but didn’t have a li-
cense or the income to afford buying
an aircraft, UltraSports decided to
target commercial jet pilots and flight
instructors for their ultra light air-
crafts. After all, these pilots were the
best pilots, they loved to fly and they
had money; however, because of
their jobs, flying had become more
automated and less fun. Then Ultra-
Sports went one step further and re-
defined the ultra light aircraft itself
by adding a stick and rudder and in-
strument controls. They made the with it. Instead, they made the mis-
take many businesses do: they used
ultra light fly like an airplane rather
than a hang-glider, which better ap- technology to get more efficient and
pealed to their new target market. Ul-lower their costs.
traSports went on to become a Similarly, the Kodak Company
was failing for over a decade. Finally,
national leader in their first year, all
because they redefined who their they looked at how they competed in
the past as well as what
it would take to compete
in the future. That’s
We can use technology to
when they embraced
eliminate jobs or create
them. It’s time for businesses digital photography.
And while they still
to focus on redefining as a have some traditional
film labs across the
country, it’s their digital
tool for job creation.
products division that’s
customer was and then made product profitable today. The moral: The
changes accordingly. longer you wait to redefine how you
So when it comes to your cus- compete, the harder it is to survive.
tomers, ask yourself some key ques- However, when you pinpoint a way
tions, such as: to use technology to create new prod-
 Is there a better customer? For ex- ucts and services, you add new rev-
ample, maybe you’re selling to a enue streams and new jobs.
customer who can only afford So when it comes to competing in
low-margin products and serv- a technology-driven age, ask yourself
ices. some key questions, such as:
 Who is your ideal customer?  Is there a way you can use tech-
 Is there a customer you don’t nology to redefine how you com-
have but should have? pete?
 Could you redefine your product  Is there a way you can use tech-
and attract that customer? nology to change your product or
 Is there a way to use technology how you service people?
to enhance your product or serv-  Is there a way you can use tech-
ice in some way that opens up a nology to redefine your cus-
market or creates a new market tomer’s experience?
for you…and thus new jobs?
A (Re)Defining Moment
Take Competition Seriously Staying ahead during a technology-
Look at the specific ways in which driven transformation is indeed pos-
you compete in the marketplace as sible. It’s all about looking at where
well as what makes you unique. Then your customers are going rather than
decide how technology can redefine where they have been. It’s about
the way you compete. For example, looking at where technology is
when was the last time you bought evolving and how it is shaping the
something from the Polaroid Com- market, not where it used to be.
pany? At one time, they were the When you ask the right questions and
king of instant photography. But then take action on what the answers re-
technology and digital photography veal, you can use technology to rede-
changed their industry, and the way fine your company, create new jobs,
they competed (instant photography) and experience higher profits than
changed…but Polaroid didn’t change ever before. si
siliconindia
|41|
June 2010
CIO Profile: By Vimali Swamy
Social Media Convergence
Key Enabler of Customer
I
Oriented Service in Future
t is often said that recession is
where the opportunity is. The
economic downturn of last year
may have been a big blow to the
majority of businesses, but the
bright side is that it has paved the way
for CXOs and entrepreneurs alike to
scout for new avenues both in business
and technology. But the biggest chal-
lenge lies ahead of the CIOs to strike a
balance between the business growth
and maximum utilization of available
resources. Sanjay Lall, VP and CIO,
SimplexGrinnell is excited at what lies
ahead. SimplexGrinnell is provider of
access control, security, CCTV, fire
alarm, audiovisual, and PBX teleph-
ony with worldwide installation and
service facilities.
“The last two years have been ex-
tremely challenging for every CIO in
the industry. While there was the
siliconindia
|42|
June 2010
need to have a constraint over one’s
resources, the business had to keep
on growing. It was important to
maintain the interests of the stock-
holders and have consistent numbers
on Wall Street Journal quarterly,” ex-
plains Lall.
Today, with a reasonably stable
market and with many new develop-
ments in the area of cloud computing
and virtualization that offer a myriad
of services at low cost, it is the ideal
scenario for him to set processes for
the company. With the data security
now possible on ‘cloud’, he believes
that IT is moving in the right direc-
tion - commoditizing the technology
partners. As information technology
shifts from being a standalone prod-
uct to shared services, it’s time CIOs
focused on using IT to improve cus-
tomer service.
the employees better informed. But
at the same time one ought to keep in
regard the security at data and net-
work level. In all, IT will become the
broker in every endeavor a business
wants to partake.
Today, Lall is busy building a team
that is focused on the needs of the
business. He is looking at IT as the key
enabler for putting SimplexGrinnell at
the pinnacle of market growth by cut-
One must try ting costs and leveraging the com-
being an
pany’s business. His goal for the next
five years is making SimplexGrinnell
entrepreneur at
the undisputed leader in its market
segment so that it is renowned glob-
least once in his ally. For this his first step is to develop
lifetime, for it is
Sanjay Lall
operational products that converge IP
with standalone devices; so that he can
then that one
drive technology to optimize infra-
structure and aid in business improve-
truly ment while lowering the costs.
The strategic minded CIO, with
understands
over 20 years of varied global IT ex-
and learns the
perience, has been wielding the helm
at SimplexGrinnell for the last four
importance and
years. As one who wanted to create a
technology oriented career, he started
useful utilization out as technology developer at Coca-
of time, capital,
Cola. But the ten year stint he had at
the company cleared his vision.
and resources
Though he was working on IT, he was
still working for a company that was
Be aware of what
in consumer oriented business. It was
then that he realized that he did not
is happening in want to get caught up in technology
the industry
for technology’s sake. It is vital that
one understands the dynamics of the
adjacent to you;
business one is working for; and he
“With the social media gathering changed track from a career in tech-
you may be
traction, there is a boom in the nology to management. In the past
amount of information available
surprised at how
years Lall has had leadership stints at
over the Internet. It is time, we fo- several billion-dollar companies in-
cused on analyzing all the data and
you may absorb
cluding Steris Corporation, Suntory
utilizing intelligent solutions like Water Group, General Motors, Gen-
some of their
cloud computing and virtualization eral Electric, GTE, and Coca-Cola. In
to make the customer experience su- an effort to round up his experience,
processes within
perior,” says Lall. he also served as VP, Operations at
This can be easily achieved by
your own
Chutney Technologies, a startup, for
capturing all the knowledge that is nine years.
organization and
out there and productively converg- To him, it is important to learn
ing social networking and making from one’s peers in the industry. “It is
benefit from it
important to be aware of what is hap-
pening in the industry adjacent to you.
You may be surprised at how you may
absorb some of their processes within
your own organization and benefit
from it,” he says. Some of the compa-
nies he looks up at are UPS and Amer-
ican Express who have created a fine
imprint when it comes to customer ori-
ented services. “I am looking at ap-
plying collaboration of technologies
and using the analytics intelligence to
leverage our customer’s experience
with us. This is something I have
learnt from my peers,” he explains.
A high performance leader, Lall
enjoys nurturing the people working
under him. He ensures building a
strong team that can step into his role
at any given time. This requires inter-
est honesty, transparency, and leading
by example, he believes.
Looking back, he is happy at
what he has achieved and extremely
values his stint at a startup. He be-
lieves that one must always try being
an entrepreneur at least once in his
lifetime, for it is then that one truly
understands and learns the impor-
tance and useful utilization of time,
capital, and resources. The startup he
worked for provided services in the
infrastructure space. “We developed
software for data caching that helped
optimize the infrastructure of an or-
ganization. The best lesson I learnt
there is that whenever you ask a cus-
tomer to pay for something you en-
sure that it is of value to him.
Customers never invest where they
see only a little value, so one must al-
ways keep a self check on one’s busi-
ness,” Lall fondly reminisces.
To his peers and entrepreneurs he
has a simple thought. One ought to
have a positive outlook as the path to
success is never straight. Be ready to
take risks but always have belief in
one’s decisions. If in dilemma, seek
a mentor, discuss every turn, and
more importantly be open to critical
feedback. si
siliconindia
|43|
June 2010
http://blogs.siliconindia.com/Manan/India_to_INDIA_The_Pokhran_way-bid-
6t8WwO5F62014998.html
India to INDIA
e Pokhran Way
T
he historic day of 11 May 1998
saw India testing its nuclear
weapons for the second time
(the first time was in May 1974). And
again on 13 May 1998 two more tests
were held. These tests made every In-
dian proud. Now India is a nuclear
super power. Now we are secured that
no country in the world that has nu-
clear weapons will dare attack India.
Every Indian was happy. But at the
same time world fraternity was aghast
at the thought that even India had ac-
quired nuclear missile. The US and
the European nations condemned
these tests as their monopoly on de-
veloping nuclear weapons broke.
They broke relationships with India.
We were in a fizzy condition as we
had started developing the economy
in the same 1990s and in a few years
such a big problem had to be faced.
All economists who had predicted
that India will not sustain its growth
and economy began loosing. Every
coin has two sides and they saw only
one side of the coin, while the other
side was as shining as the sun.
In the year 1947 India got its in-
dependence and then we started a
new chapter towards prosperity. But
during those early years Indian econ-
omy was not doing well as India was
a secular nation with socialist think-
siliconindia
|44|
June 2010
ing. We never thought that globaliza-
tion will help India to earn respect
economically. In the early 1990s we
opened up our economy and stepped
towards globalization. But after 1998,
when the powerful countries re-
stricted their business with India, In-
dian economy started to look beyond
these countries. India developed very
good bilateral relations with China.
Currently, China is India's second
largest business partner. India helped
the African nations and developed
and maintained good relations with
them. Because of the restriction in
business from powerful countries,
India looked beyond them and
earned a lot of respect from these
countries in business and foreign
policy matters. This made India in-
dependent in economy and relieved
it from the restrictions of these pow-
erful countries. This showed the way
to other small countries that if big
and powerful nations are not taking
note of you look for alternatives,
make your economy strong by en-
couraging students to go for further
studies, encourage researchers, en-
courage entrepreneurs, and take your
country onto a next level.
World noticed India's progress.
India encouraged its entrepreneurs and
they started manufacturing products
Blog
http://blogs.siliconindia.com/
Author: Manan Bhatt
Quantitative Analyst,
Geodesic Information Systems
which were seldom manufactured in
India before. And then came the IT
revolution. Information technology
brought India on the map of develop-
ing nations of the world. Today India
is an IT hub and Bangalore became a
big IT hub. Even Oxford Dictionary
took note of Bangalore and added a
word 'Bangalored' in their new Dic-
tionary. During these years world
began looking at India not as a country
but as a developing super power. This
is not because of the IT revolution or
population growth or share market but
because of its strength to believe in its
ability as a country, its people and
their foresightedness to look beyond
something. And all this happened be-
cause of Pokhran nuclear tests. That
day India was proud and the next day
world condemned the nuclear tests
which were aimed at our own security.
And then India started its free run to-
wards development and today we feel
proud that we are in this country
where you get a chance to think big.
The revolt of 1857 formed the
base for Indian political independ-
ence; and the same way we can say
nuclear tests are in the base of
India's economic independence.
These tests helped us to find our
strength and opportunities on which
we can work on.
 siTech20 Job Fair
U.S INDEX
Index of the top tech public companies in U.S founded
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siliconindia
|46| June 2010
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