India's net software exports down to 10-year low

The higher risk aversion by the Western outsourcing clients has impacted India's software receipts in the 12 months to June 2012. According to the latest trade data from the Reserve Bank of India (RBI), net software exports grew at the slowest rate of 4% in the last 10 years.

Net software exports, calculated as the difference between software receipts and payments, were $61.5 billion (approximately Rs 3.1 lakh crore) in the 12 months to June 2012 compared with $58.9 billion (approximately 2.7 lakh crore) in the prior 12-month period.

The growth in the latest 12 months period to June 2012 lags behind the growth seen during the subprime period four years ago.

The last time net exports growth fell to single digits was in the four quarters to June 2009, which encompassed the financial crisis in the West. Net exports had risen by 6.4% on year-on-year basis during the period as large financial institutions, which are major consumers of Indian IT services, were forced to cut technology budgets to curtail the impact of subprime debt default.

Source: Agencies

58 new space missions for ISRO

ISRO plans to launch 58 space missions, including sending spacecraft to moon and Mars, an exclusive satellite to keep a round-the-clock watch on the country and deploy 500 transponders in the next five years. 

The space agency also aims to deploy its own version of the Global Positioning System by putting into orbit a constellation of seven satellites which would form the Indian Regional Navigational Satellite System (IRNSS). 

According to the 12th Five Year Plan, approved by the Cabinet last week, the Indian Space Research Organisation plans to add 400 transponders to the existing 187 to meet the growing demand from DTH operators, satellite mobile communications and new generation broadband VSAT systems. 

An indicative plan outlay of Rs 39,750 crore for the 12th Plan has been made for the Department of Space. 

"Overall, 58 missions are planned for realisation during 12th Plan period which includes 33 satellite missions and 25 launch vehicle missions," the 12th Plan document says. 

The space agency is also designing a special 'eye-in-the- sky' -- Geo-Imaging Satellite or GISAT --- to be stationed 36,000 km above to maintain round-the-clock vigil and assist state authorities to tackle natural disasters, floods and forest fires and keep a watch over the country's sensitive borders. 

Missions initiated in the 11th Plan like Chandrayaan-II, Astrosat-1 and Aditya-1 are also expected to set forth on their respective destinations into space over the next five years. 

As part of Chandrayaan-II, ISRO plans to land a rover on the lunar surface and put a satellite in an orbit around the moon. The mission is expected to be launched in 2014.

Source: Agencies

TPL: Contest For The Tech Prowess IT Heads

Hey,
Are you a IT head eager to demonstrate your prowess in technology. Then here is a contest just for you...
The Technology Premier League 2012 is a Inter-corporate Team challenge jointly developed by ITNEXT and The CTO Forum.
The contest will involve 20 corporate IT teams in each city -- Delhi, Mumbai and Bangalore. Each 4-member corporate team will be supported by the CIO (or IT head of the organization), The CIO will play the role of a coach & captain, and will guide and advise the 4-member team during the contest.

The contest will be held over two days in an off-site location in these three cities. Each team will be given a complex business problem—and will need to create a comprehensive IT solution.

Here is what you can win:* 1st Prize - Trip to Las Vegas (air fare + hotel) for the entire team
* 2nd Prize - Local weekend getaway (hotel stay) for entire team
* 3rd prize: Corporate Utility Gift for entire team
* Team 4 & 5: Gift vouchers for entire team

The event is scheduled to be held at:Delhi - 26th & 27th May'12
Mumbai -2nd & 3rd June'12
Bangalore - 16th & 17th June'12

All you need to do is to register in the link below:

http://tpl2012.com/register/

2 million new jobs in cloud computing space by 2015

A Microsoft commissioned Study, conducted by IDC, predicts that cloud computing will generate over 2 million jobs in India by 2015. The findings predict that cloud will generate nearly 14 million new jobs worldwide in the same time. More than 50 % of these jobs will be generated in the small and medium businesses. Further, more than two million jobs each will be generated in the ‘communications and media’ and manufacturing sectors, followed by banking at over 1.4 million. Pointing to the strong linkage between cloud, innovation and entrepreneurship, the study estimates that revenues from cloud innovation could reach US$1.1 trillion per year by 2015. Combined with cloud efficiencies, this will drive significant organizational reinvestment and job growth.

Cloud computing is already changing how IT delivers economic value to countries, cities, industries, and businesses. IDC estimates that in 2011 alone, IT cloud services helped businesses around the world generate more than US$600 billion in revenue and 1.5 million new jobs. Further, the spending on public cloud IT services in 2011 stood at US$28 billion, while the total spending on IT products and services was US$1.7 trillion.

The study also indicates that countries investing in key cloud infrastructure will experience greater job growth. The factors determining the number of jobs that might be created in a particular country include projected level of spending on IT, degree of automation, workforce size amongst others.

“For most organizations, cloud computing is a no-brainer when considering it enables massive return on investment and flexibility,” said John F. Gantz, Chief Research Officer and Senior Vice President at IDC. “A common misperception is cloud computing is a job eliminator, but in truth it will be a job creator — a major one. And job growth will occur across continents and throughout organizations of all sizes because emerging markets, small cities and small businesses have the same access to cloud benefits as large enterprises or developed nations.”

While sharing the findings of the study, Floris van Heist, General Manager, Business & Marketing, Microsoft Corporation India Pvt. Ltd, said, “Cloud computing poses a compelling opportunity for businesses and governments around the world. India is uniquely poised to leverage this opportunity with factors like an unparalleled ecosystem of developers, ISVs and SIs, no legacy IT systems and a high growth rate of economy contributing towards growth of cloud computing. Microsoft is playing a key role in the cloud space to help businesses realize their full potential and move governments closer to their vision.”

Microsoft offers comprehensive services across all three service layers of the cloud, viz. infrastructure, platform and software as services. Microsoft’s offerings have seen great momentum in India and across the world. Office 365, Microsoft’s enterprise-class cloud productivity suite and Dynamics CRM Online have been adopted widely by organizations of all sizes across the country. Windows Azure, Microsoft’s platform in the cloud, is fostering innovation and entrepreneurship on a wide spectrum in addition to providing a compelling option to businesses to develop, host and render applications from the cloud. Similarly, private cloud services from Microsoft are seeing good momentum with enterprises.

With all of Microsoft’s key products having a cloud offering, it is uniquely positioned to provide unmatched flexibility – from a complete on-premise solution to one completely in the cloud to any mix of the two in-between. Further, with the option to evolve this mix in any manner, Microsoft is empowering customers to move to the cloud on their terms. Embedded within is the trust of customers in Microsoft as a provider of enterprise-class services with no compromises to availability, reliability or security.

Says CV Prakash, Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Gradatim, a specialist in technology solutions for businesses that offer microfinance products and services, and uses Azure: "In 2010, we evaluated a number of shared services platforms and zeroed in upon Windows Azure. We realised soon enough the Microsoft cloud edge. Azure not only gave us stronger support for geographic expansion, saved us about $2 million in operating expenses, shortened customer deployment cycles from three months to two weeks and even improved our ability to reach out to new customers, and speeded up our ability to bring solutions to market. The overall Azure experience for us was phenomenal."

Will the Role of the CIO Cease to Exist in 5 Years’ Time?

According to Getronics research reveals that CFOs’ predictions on the changing nature of the CIO’s role.

The role of the CIO in its current capacity will not exist in five years’ time according to research findings revealed by Getronics today. The survey of 203 key financial decision makers in companies of 1,000 employees or more, found that almost one in five CFOs (17%) believe that the role of the CIO as it currently stands is in jeopardy. A further 43% of financial decision makers believe that the role will merge more with finance and a third (31%) believe that CIOs will come from a non-technical background.

The changing role of the CIO:
The role of the CIO has already been subject to a number of changes in recent years, with 77% of CFOs and Financial Directors claiming that they have already assumed greater responsibility for IT decisions over the past 1-2 years. Indeed, respondents revealed that 38% of businesses that have rolled out a cloud computing solution had the project initiated directly by the finance department, rather than IT. A further 39% stated that they had been directly involved in cloud projects, but only after the IT department had initiated it. This trend can be attributed, in part, to the attractive utility model of cloud services, where companies avoid long-term contracts and can track ROI and costs far more accurately.

Finance and the cloud:
The research also reveals that CFOs and other financial decision makers are increasing their technology understanding, with only 2% admitting they “were not aware of the term cloud computing”, whilst the majority were able to provide a meaningful description of its use. This reveals the increasing efforts from finance to truly understand technology and can be seen to be creating opportunities for the CIO to gain companywide buy-in for cloud services as business requirements evolve.

CFO and CIO integration:
When it comes to understanding of their own roles, two out of five (38%) CFOs and Financial Directors believe that CIOs do not hold a good level of financial understanding. Surprisingly, 40% also believed that their CIOs need a greater understanding of the IT function itself. Compounding this lack of understanding of both roles, more than half (56%) of the CFOs and Financial Directors surveyed believe that a lack of integration between finance and IT limits the impact on cost savings achievable from IT projects within their business. This reveals the need for greater integration between the two departments which is a growing development in business with nearly half (48%) citing a trend towards closer integration. Simultaneously, however, some businesses are at the opposite end of the scale with 35% of businesses citing a decrease.

CFO concerns for IT spending:
The research also revealed the top IT spending concerns for CFOs and Financial Directors. Maintenance of IT infrastructure was the key concern, with two-thirds (64%) of respondents claiming this was an ongoing challenge for their businesses. A further 48% stated that they were concerned by the level of expenditure paid to consultancies, whilst 47% stated that licence payments for software was a major headache. As the CIO role continues to evolve, it is likely that the consultancy for businesses will be driven internally with outsourced consultancy decreasing.

“The role of the CIO has often been a point of contention within many organisations since its very inception,” says Mark Cook, CEO, Getronics UK. “Some of us in the industry will remember when the first IT roles were created in business and that these were predominately always within finance. It’s only in recent years that we’ve seen IT as a standalone department and we’re now seeing it come full circle, with one crucial difference: the CIO today is responsible for greater levels of innovation than ever before. We’re seeing CIOs moving away from previous years of having to lead on daily IT operations and maintenance into that of a provider of strategic consultancy to finance and the wider business. Only by freeing up CIOs from the day-to-day burden of managing assets will organisations be able to truly realise the value that a CIO can bring to their business.”

The full findings of the research are unveiled today in a new Getronics report, The Changing Role of the CFO, which is available for download at http://getronics-uk.com/. 203 key financial decision makers working in the UK for companies with 1,000 or more employees were interviewed for the survey.

Digit Meego AppMania Contest

Hi friends,

Do you think creating apps is FUN? If your answer is yes, then we assure you of raw fun with MeeGo AppMania contest. Register for the contest, create some interesting apps and you could win 10 Meego tablets and 50 x Rs. 5000 worth of SodexHo gift vouchers.

Once you have created the Apps and published them on Intel AppUp, kindly let us know the names of all "Meego Apps" that you have created and published on Intel AppUp developer program by replying to this thread. This will complete your participation in the Meego App Mania contest.

So, what are you waiting for? Do your tech laces and gear up for one of the most exciting app development contest.

Prizes:

* All developers who submit 3 valid Apps will get one Windows Mobile each
* Microsoft will reimburse the Developer Sign Up Fee in the form of Rs. 5,000 worth of gift vouchers to all successful developers who submit 3 Apps.*
* The developer who submits the maximum number of Apps in the month of January stands a chance to get featured in the March Issue of Digit Magazine and the Digit website (www.thinkdigit.com)*
* Every participant who submits 6 valid apps would be given a six-months subscription to Digit worth Rs. 1000/-*
* Every developer who submits 6 valid Apps stands a chance to win an exciting windows phone accessory.*

Participate Now