Ness Digital Engineering Expands Partnership with Snowflake in India

Ness Digital Engineering has announced it is expanding its partnership with Snowflake, the cloud data platform. Ness earned “Select” partner status and this enhanced strategic alliance expands Ness’s robust suite of data analytics and artificial intelligence solutions at a time when customers of all sizes and industries are demanding more business value from their data.

Snowflake’s support for data warehousing workloads provides a low maintenance, cost effective way for organizations to consolidate all their data silos into a single source of truth, allowing Ness to deliver near real time, data-driven insights to help clients achieve desired business outcomes.

Scott Schlesinger, Senior Vice President and Global Head of the Data and Analytics Practice at Ness Digital Engineering, says, “Snowflake’s dedicated storage and computing engines enable advanced data analytics capabilities that we use to help customers realize the power of their data and improve productivity and increase revenue. Combining the power of Snowflake with Ness’s deep modernization capabilities and AI accelerator presents a formidable offering to our customers looking to expedite time to market for data and analytics solutions and seamlessly execute transformative projects.”

Ness’s status as an Amazon Web Services Advanced partner, Microsoft Azure Gold partner and Google Cloud partner allows the company to bring Snowflake’s instant, frictionless, secure sharing of live data – within and between organizations – to all its clients embarking on their data warehouse modernization journey. Snowflake’s cloud data platform requires zero management for all the customer’s data and users in a cost-effective and scalable “pay only for what you use” structure.

Katie Ecklund, Director of NoAm Partners, Snowflake, comments, “Ness’s expertise in data and analytics plays a critical role in helping organizations engage customers and differentiate their brands,’ positioning them as an important member of Snowflake’s partner community. Ness has innovation hubs and delivery teams around the world, providing a global footprint that can work with Snowflake’s enterprise customers across geographic boundaries to increase the value of their digital solutions.”

Over 121,000 Filipinos' jobs axed amid global recession

Over 121,000 Filipino workers have either lost their jobs or suffered pay cuts or reduced work loads because of the economic crisis, a government official said Sunday.

Between October last year and mid-March, 11,574 permanently lost their jobs and 38,806 others were temporarily laid off by Philippines-based companies, Labour Undersecretary Rosalinda Baldoz told an economic forum in this industrial enclave north of Manila.

A total of 59,149 others were placed on flexible work arrangements, she added.

Meanwhile, 12,000 out of the 8.5 million-strong Filipino work force abroad had lost their jobs, mostly in Taiwan and the United Arab Emirates (UAE), according to Baldoz.

Last week the government said electronics firms based in the Philippines began giving their remaining workers half-pay or 150 pesos (3.11 dollars) a day in a bid to keep them employed until demand picks up again.

The labour undersecretary said the electronics sector was the worst hit with almost half the total work force affected.

The crisis has also hit about 10 per cent of employees in the automotive, garments, mining, property, services, and woodworking industries, she added.

She went on to say the government expects the crisis to bottom out over the next few months as just 397 workers a day were losing their jobs in mid-March compared to 437 at the start of the month.

"Before the first semester ends, we could say that the worst is over," she said.

"In the next five months, workers' displacements will continue but we expect it to be on a slower pace and only in the export manufacturing sector."

Agencies

Will Fujitsu cut 1,750 jobs?

Japan's Fujitsu Ltd announced plans to axe 1,750 jobs in the Philippines, blaming the global economic downturn.

Workers have been offered early retirement packages to leave Fujitsu Computer Products Corp, which makes disk drives, said Ernesto Espinosa, a manager.

"We launched a voluntary leaving programme and the reason for this is that because of the global recession," he said.

Labour Secretary Marianito Roque told reporters the government had been notified of the plan, which takes effect on April 18.

He said this brought the number of Filipinos who had lost their jobs since the financial crisis unfolded last year to about 45,000. The government expects 800,000 people to lose jobs, mainly in the electronics and clothing sectors, before the downturn eases.

About nine million Filipinos, or 10 per cent of the population, were without jobs or underemployed, the government announced.

Espinosa said Fujitsu failed to save the jobs despite earlier efforts to cut working hours and overtime pay, which drastically reduced employees' salaries.

"Because of that we have no other choice but to offer voluntary separation," he added. About 2,900 other workers will remain with the company, based in Calamba town, south of Manila, he said.

Fujitsu announced in Japan last month that it would sell an 80 per cent stake to Japanese rival Toshiba Corp.

Agencies

IBM to host gen-next technology competition

As part of its University Relations programme, IBM has rolled out a novel gen-next technology challenge titled "IBM Blue Battle" in over 25 leading engineering colleges across India.

The first in the "IBM Blue Battle" series has been launched at IIIT Hyderabad and is being conducted on IBM Multi-core architecture for gaming. Colleges to follow include UVCE Bangalore, JNTU Hyderabad, Madras Institute of Technology (Anna University) Chennai, few IITs and NITs.

Amol Mahamuni, programme director, WebSphere Solutions and Technology and University Relations-IBM India/SA, said, "The challenge will enhance the students' knowledge on technologies that are at the helm of innovation across the industry and provide them with an opportunity to develop innovative solutions in real work scenario." It hones their technical skills while learning basic on-the-job skills such as teamwork, organization, and working under deadlines, he added.

The competition will enable participants to work on technologies such as Multi processors/Nano technology, electronics, service oriented architecture (SOA), Multi Core Architecture, Enterprise Computing (IBM System z), Information Management, Web 2.0, cloud computing, virtualization and High Performance Computing (HPC). Mentors from IBM, along with the college faculty, will closely work with the students throughout the programme.


This competition will also enable students to work on projects using IBM products, applications, tools and services in the future through further collaboration and mentoring by IBM experts.


The winners of this competition will receive prizes including Lenovo Ideapad laptops, along with certification from IBM.

IBM's University Relations has been partnering with academia to drive evolving open standards-based IT skills.

CXOtoday.com

Panasonic to layoff 15,000 jobs, closing 27 plants

Japan's Panasonic Corp. said Wednesday it was cutting 15,000 jobs and closing 27 plants worldwide as it braces for a big loss this due to the economic crisis.

Agencies

Are layoffs raising? Reports say 9,000 job vanishing each day

More and more people are becoming unemployed this year, with nearly 9,000 jobs vanishing worldwide on an average each day in January.

As the financial turmoil continues to rattle world economies, layoffs so far this year have crossed the 2,77,000 -mark with a stunning 80,000 job cuts announced January 26.

Right from electronics to telecom to pharma sectors, about 9,000 jobs were lost on an average every day this month.

Among the entities, construction machinery manufacturer Caterpillar, Japanese electronics major NEC and pharma giant Pfizer have announced over 20,000 job cuts each.

Dutch entities - electronics firm Philips and financial services company ING - together would be axing 13,000 jobs in the coming months.

Caterpillar, Pfizer, telecom firm Sprint Nextel Corp and home improvement retailer Home Depot together accounted for 61,000 lay-off announcements on January 26. The total job cuts announced on that day worldwide had crossed 80,000.

The bankruptcy of American electronics retailer Circuit City is expected to affect 30,000 employees whereas aluminium manufacturer Alcoa would be laying off 13,500 people.

Further, Indian conglomerate Tatas-owned UK steel maker Corus would be reducing its workforce by 3,500.

Other entities which unveiled plans to bring down headcount in January include TDK (8,000), BHP Billiton (6,000), Ericsson (5,000), Corning (4,900), Motorola (4,000), Texas Instruments (3,400), Honda (3,100), Kodak (3,000), Ford Motor (1,200) and Harley-Davidson (1,100).

Companies worldwide are bringing down their workforce as they explore ways to battle the dire economic situation. With consumer and business spending being crimped, many of the developed nations have already entered into recession.

Agencies