India’s Top 10 Most Tech-Savvy Politicians In 2014

Call it a bid to woo younger, urban voters or to exploit a relatively affordable medium to spread their ideologies, politicians have now started venturing into a territory they seldom deemed fit before- cyberspace. And if a latest new study is to be believed, the 2014 General Election’s outcome is likely to be influenced the most by social media users. So, who are India’s most tech-savvy, social media friendly politicians? We tell you about the top 10 leaders who have been exploiting social media to its fullest.

1) Narendra Modi

We cannot not begin this list with Narendra Modi, BJP’s PM-in-waiting, for he wins the social media crown hands down. He has a website, a Facebook and twitter page with 15 lakh and 3.7 Million followers respectively, a YouTube channel, the most successful Google+ page ever as well as a personal blog to boot. With such a massive 360 degree connect; the followers of Narendra Modi are well aware of what he is thinking, what he is saying and more importantly, what he is doing. 

2) L K Advani

L K Advani, a prominent senior leader and politician, constantly uses social media to spread his opinions to his large number of fans and followers by his Facbook and Twitter. He also owns a website and a blog where he posts latest news and opinion about the present political situations.

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3) Naveen Jindal

This young MP from Kurukshetra, Haryana, who is also the chairman of Jindal Steel and Pvt Ltd, has built quite a social media connect. Naveen Jindal also has a brilliant PR team that works towards making his website engaging and informative at the same time. It offers a glimpse into his political activities, and rallies, and also tries to establish a dialogue. 

4) Milind Deora

A neatly designed website which gives a lowdown of his work and engagements, and an interesting Twitter profile with 1.28 Lakh followers, Milind Deora is someone who knows how to utilize the medium to its best. The young Minister of State is also known for his humorous but tactful tweets aimed especially for the youth. 

5) Arvind Kejriwal

With close to 1.61 million Twitter followers, Arvind Kejriwal, it seems, has a massive following after Narendra Modi. This anti-corruption crusader’s tweets are something to look forward to as he relentlessly tweets about the misdemeanors of NaMo and other politicians, as well as the work that AAP entails. 

6) Sushma Swaraj

She is one of the most socially recognizable politician around, all thanks to her fiery speeches in the parliament and equally fervent tweets, which can put many a young politician to shame. She also has nearly 1.02 Million followers on Twitter. 

7) Mamata Banerjee

The Trinamool Congress’ chief Mamata Banerjee hasn’t caught the Twitter bug yet, but she loves her Facebook. Needless to say, this West Bengal chief minister has been using the medium quite well, considering she has over 282,000 likes on her page. From expressing her views and outrage on national and international events to uploading pictures of her rallies and events, her posts are almost endless. 

8) Shashi Tharoor

Shashi Tharoor is the poster boy of social media management and the informal brand ambassador of Twitter. He was the first politician to have had the highest number of Twitter followers initially, which is now close to 2.14 million followers. Although, the micro-blogging site has landed him in the soup several times through his views, but it also gave him popularity and to his website, which essentially consists of his articles and book descriptions.   

9) Manmohan Singh

No no, we haven't any secret account that proves Manmohan Singh has been speaking all this while. Actually, a team of government officials at the PMO have been tweeting and writing on our PM's behalf. It definitely seems to work as Dr Singh's account has over 5 lakh Twitter followers. He also has a Facebook account and a website, which he uses to share the official statements, recent developments, remarks and quotes. 

10) Gul Panag

Aam Aadmi party’s Chandigarh candidate, actor Gul Panag has always been a tech-savvy woman, one of the first actors to have her own personal website, something that is an added advantage for her maiden candidature. She has had organized many interactive sessions with the voters in the past on Google Hangouts, through mobile apps, and of course Facebook and Twitter, and has close to 8.5 lakh Twitter followers.

Source: mensxp.com

Firstsource Scores High in Grant Thornton UK Report

Firstsource Solutions, a leading global provider of business process outsourcing (BPO) services, is ranked 15th in the UK’s top 41 fastest-growing Indian companies list, published by business and financial advisers Grant Thornton UK LLP.

As well as being the highest ranked Business Process Outsourcing company in the list, it is also ranked as the 6th largest Indian employer in the UK, in the report ‘India meets Britain - Tracking the UK’s top Indian companies,’ published in collaboration with the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII).

The report says: “Indian companies are succeeding in the UK and contributing to overall economic prosperity. Our Tracker monitors UK businesses with ultimate Indian parent companies to identify the fastest-growing companies by turnover, as well as the top Indian employers. It provides a unique insight into the scale, business activities, locations and performance of Indian-owned companies making the biggest impact in the UK.”

Iain Regan, Executive Vice-President, Sales and Marketing, Firstsource Solutions, said: “We are pleased to have scored so highly in this prestigious list. It is indicative of the success of our global “rightshore” model where at least 70% of our global operations are based in the countries they serve.

“By investing in this way we ensure we get close to our clients and their customers while providing employment opportunities in those local economies. It’s why we have been able to employ thousands of people in the UK over the last decade and more.

“We have recently launched a range of market leading new products, industry tools and platforms including First Customer Intelligence, First Chat and First Smartomation, which we have been introducing to our clients to help them deliver real business improvements. The future therefore looks bright, as we plan to expand our services, particularly in the financial services and telecoms sectors.”

iYogi Gets US$28 Million Funds From Axon Partners

International investment firm, Axon Partners Group, has invested in iYogi, a global leader in on-demand tech support for consumers and small businesses, bringing the total raised so far in this Series E financing round to US $28 million.

Axon Partners Group, which has a strong presence in Spain and Latin America, has joined this round along with Madison India Capital and some existing investors, to support iYogi’s growth in these regions through partnerships with telecom companies.

Francisco Velázquez de Cuéllar, President of Axon Partners Group comments, "Axon is very pleased to be working with iYogi, further expanding our technology portfolio in India. We have been impressed by iYogi’s technology, energy and professional management. Technology is one of the hot investment areas and is one of Axon’s core investment focuses worldwide, so we believe that iYogi represents a great opportunity for our investors.”

With its series E investment, iYogi expects to double its revenue in the next 24 months. iYogi recently launched its services in Spain through a partnership with Telefonica and established a service delivery center in the country. This delivery center will also serve as a center of excellence supporting iYogi’s expansion in Latin America. 

“It’s great to have Axon Partners Group on board, as their presence will help accelerate our expansion into Latin America. Spanish is the 2^nd most popular language across the globe and key markets across the Latin American region are witnessing rapid growth in devices, which presents a tremendous growth opportunity. We plan to initially focus on the four geographies in this region.  It’s great to have the right investors backing us as we change gears,” says Uday Challu, co-founder and CEO, iYogi.  

At the core of iYogi’s expansion strategy lies the Digital Service Cloud*, its proprietary technology platform which can help telecom companies capture a share of the global cloud computing opportunity estimated by Forrester to be $250 billion by 2020. Telecom companies can generate new revenues through SaaS based premium support services aimed at consumers and small businesses in partnership with iYogi.

Axon Partners Group, an emerging markets specialist, manages over USD 180m in funds worldwide, with The India Opportunities Fund (Gurgaon, Delhi) being one of its largest, through which it is has recently invested in JustEat India.  Axon is perfectly positioned to support iYogi and other Indian SMEs in their international expansion due to its on-the-ground presence and experience in geographies such as Latin America, Europe and the U.S.  Axon plans to increase its investment activity throughout 2014, concentrating on companies in the growth or expansion stages in the healthcare and technology sectors.

Francisco Velázquez de Cuéllar adds, “iYogi is our fourth investment in India and we look forward to supporting the team in their expansion into new business verticals across the different geographies, specially Europe, Latam and some African countries. We have experience working with various large telecommunication operators worldwide which also provides an added advantage to iYogi’s business plans going forward.”

Michael Frendo Joins Polycom as Executive VP Engg

Polycom, Inc. has announced that Michael Frendo is joining the company as Executive Vice President of Worldwide Engineering, effective Tuesday, May 13, 2014.  In this role, Frendo will be responsible for global engineering delivery and execution, driving efficient business operations, and lifecycle management for Polycom’s portfolio of video, voice and content collaboration solutions. Frendo will assume responsibility from A.E. Natarajan, who will be leaving Polycom. Natarajan will work closely with Frendo to ensure a smooth transition. Frendo will be a member of Polycom’s executive team and will report to President and CEO Peter Leav.

“Making our customers successful and driving profitable growth are our top priorities and Michael brings a deep understanding of how engineering, quality and innovation must be aligned to solve our customers’ biggest challenges. He is also a well-respected executive and engineering leader with broad experience running product business units and globally distributed engineering organisations that deliver results,” said Leav. “We thank A.E. for his contributions to Polycom and wish him the best in the next chapter of his career.”

“I look forward to leading the global engineering team and working closely with Peter and the executive team as we focus on providing an outstanding user experience, developing industry leading and customer focused innovations, and delivering a high quality, world class collaboration portfolio,” said Frendo.

Prior to joining Polycom, Frendo was the Senior Vice President of Architecture at Infinera Corp., where he led the architecture team responsible for all aspects of Infinera’s systems and optical architecture. Frendo has had extensive experience leading global product organisations. At Avaya, he was General Manager of the Unified Communications Solutions Business Unit, where he was responsible for integrating Nortel’s Enterprise Solutions Business into Avaya’s portfolio of solutions. He also held various executive, global engineering and general management leadership roles at Juniper Networks, McDATA Corp. and Cisco Systems, where he was Vice President for Systems and Software Engineering in the company’s Voice Technology Group.

India Sees 6.5% Growth In IT Services Market In 2013

The India IT services market in second half of 2013  has  seen  a  sluggish growth compared to same period in 2012, as the dynamic market conditions compelled enterprises to take a cautious approach towards  their  technology  budgets.  According  to  the International Data Corporation (IDC) the IT services market in India witnessed an year on year growth  of  approximately  6.5%  in  2H CY 2013 over 2H CY 2012, to reach a value  of  INR 2,56,452 million (USD 4.1 billion)  the exchange rate for 2H 2013  -  1USD= INR 62.08. The lower than expected growth in the IT services market  is  mainly  attributed to the cautious approach in the market and a decrease in the infrastructure spend.

Several services markets fared better than others in this period:

 * Support services saw a quiet period in terms of growth in 2H CY 2013 with  organizations  looking at cost cutting measures and holding off plans for  hardware and software refresh. The support services market saw a growth of 5.5% over 2H CY 2012.

* System  integration  and  IT  consulting  services also registered a growth of 6.8% and 6.3% respectively, which was a bit slower than the 1H  2013 owing to fewer infrastructure projects. Outsourcing services market  though  one of the leading segments in the IT services market saw  a  slight decline than the previous half of the year and grew by close  to7.1%  in  2H  CY  2013  over  2H  CY 2012. Large outsourcing contracts  are  being  replaced  by small discrete outsourcing deals, where  the  contract  value, and length of contract have come down to 3-5  years  instead of 7-10 years. Managed Services market has picked up  pace  as  organizations  are  looking  for  solutions  which  are efficient  and  cost  effective.  However, concerns around providers’ capabilities  to  manage  vertical specific applications remain high, which is limiting the kind of applications getting outsourced and the overall scope of engagement.

Sachin  Chaturvedi, Senior Analyst for IT Services at IDC says "The growing complexity  of  enterprise  IT environments, combined with the challenge of availability  of advanced technical skills, will push organizations to turn to outsourcing services.

IBM  managed  to command almost 12.1% of the IT Services market in India in H2 2013. It  has benefited from its long time presence in India and ability to  execute  a  range  of  IT  services, from software and hardware support

installation  to  systems  integration  and  information system outsourcing (ISO).

Wipro  is  second  with 7.4% market-share in H2 2013, which is a noteworthy jump  from  a  market-share  of  6.9%  in  H1  2013.  Wipro has won several strategic outsourcing contracts which has increased its  revenue base.

            

"The service providers landscape is set for the battle for dominance as the competitive  landscape  heats  up  with the continuing spend and increasing maturity in the India IT Services space" says Chaturvedi.

Key sectors like Banking and Financial Services, Manufacturing, Telecom and Government make up for a large portion of total IT Services spend in India. In  H2  2013, all these sectors put together constituted 82.5% of the total spend.  Banks  continue  with  their  IT  adoption,  with  a  focus towards delivering  value to  their  client and organizations by reducing cost and improving  efficiency.  They  are  automating  their  back end processes to offset  the higher cost of financial inclusion, which involves large amount of manual intervention.

Although  India’s  manufacturing  sector was plagued by high cost pressure, decreasing domestic demand, high inflation and unclear government policies, spend  on  IT  Services  continues  as large and medium sized manufacturing firms prepare for the future.

India Elections 2014 Uses Big Data,, EVMs On Cloud Computing Platform

We are in the last leg of the 2014 Lok Sabha elections, and on May 16 the counting would begin.  For many this would be a new experience. These first time young voters must have surely heard of the Electronic Voting Machines or EVMs at the voting booths, but having not seen it before, we tell you how they work.

The machine essentially includes a control unit and a balloting unit, both connected via a five meter cable. These machines can be powered by a six volt alkaline battery, which means they can easily be used in rural areas where there is no electricity.

A voter has to simply press a button on the side of a candidate’s party image to cast his or her vote. A machine can only accept five votes in a minute, and after each vote, the machine locks itself and can only be unlocked using a new ballot number. The polling booth is always presided by a government officer in charge of the controlling unit of the EVM. The officer is the one in charge of unlocking the machine to accept another ballot. This system is tamper-proof and a person won’t be able to cast more than one vote.

One machine is able to accept up to 3,840 votes, and cater to 16 candidates each. So with four EVMs at a polling booth, these machines can cater to 64 candidates in one constituency. If there is a constituency, where there are more than 64 candidates, the polling booth has to fall back on the traditional paper ballots.

An EVM has more than one advantage over paper ballots. It is tamper-proof, illiterate people find it easier to press a button than putting a stamp on a paper and finally the vote counting takes only two to three hours as compared to 30-40 hours using the traditional method.

Are EVMs still a Big Concern?

One of the issues of concern to the voter is the performance and credibility of the electronic voting machines (EVM) used for registering the votes.

In India, the EVMs are designed and developed under the close coordination of the EC.  The two major Government of India enterprises i.e., Bharat Electronic Limited (BEL) and Electronics Corporation of India Limited (ECIL) are the two prestigious institutions are responsible for improvement and also the production of the EVM’s.

On one side, our EVM’s are showing excellent performance because of which countries like Namibia are interested to use EVMs manufactured in India.

The other side of the EVM performance is not encouraging.  The operation is having lot of disturbances as detailed below.

• The EVM’s get stuck up.  The voters standing in the queue would be finding it difficult and they pressurize the staff on polling duty for rectification of the EVMs.  Many incidents have been reported where due to malfunctioning of EVM’s the polling did not start as per the schedule.  Though there are sufficient number of spare EVM’s provided by the EC, the same may not come handy and in time in case of EVM’s getting stuck up.

• The other major criticism on EVM’s is that the machines are transferring the votes not as per actual.  For ex. In some cases, the votes are polled to candidate of one particular party though the voters cast their vote to different candidate.  The demo of EVM conducted by the EC in Assam to the political parties proved this point well.  The EC tried to give explanation but it could not satisfy the political parties on the perfect and impartial functioning of the EVMs.  Kerala branch of Aam Aadmi Party reported this kind of malfunctioning in the present elections.

Despite the ease of operation and ease of counting of votes, the problems posed by the EVM’s need to be rectified and the performance of the machines to be ensured so that the voter and political parties get confidence about the perfect and impartial performance of the EVMs.

India's Top 10 Technology Trends in 2014

Gartner, Inc.  highlighted the top 10 technology trends and drivers that will be strategic for Indian organizations in 2014. Gartner defines a strategic technology as one with the potential for significant impact on the enterprise in the next three years. Factors that denote significant impact include a high potential for disruption to IT or the business, the need for a major financial investment, or the risk of being late to adopt.

A strategic technology may be an existing technology that has matured and/or has become suitable for a wider range of uses. It may also be an emerging technology that offers an opportunity for strategic business advantage for early adopters or with potential for significant market disruption in the next five years. These technologies can impact an organization's long-term plans, programs and initiatives.

“We have identified the top 10 technology trends and drivers Indian companies should factor into their strategic planning processes,” said Vishal Tripathi, principal research analyst at Gartner. “This does not necessarily mean adoption and investment in all of the listed technologies is essential, but companies should look to make deliberate decisions about them during the next two years.”

Tripathi said that while Indian companies may be keen to invest in new technologies, there are still roadblocks to full-scale adoption including business readiness, a lack of capacity for organizational change and low levels of IT funding. Implementing business process improvements, revenue growth through differentiated products and services, and business expansion are the top business priority areas of investment for Indian organizations.

The top 10 strategic technology trends for Indian companies in 2014 include:

Business Intelligence (BI) and Analytics

The BI, analytics and performance management segment is the hottest software market in India, fueled by IT prioritization and expanding business buying centers. A competitive business environment and economic conditions are also forcing enterprises in India to focus on using fact based decision-making tools to rationalize costs and time for businesses. Enterprises in India will continue to use BI to be transformative in their approach.

Mobility Solutions

Mobility in enterprise has created a huge opportunity for IT leaders to reduce costs, increase productivity and enable smooth business transactions. Swift growth in the prevalence of mobile devices, a decline in their price, and falling data plan costs have the potential to completely transform some business models. Organizations in India are beginning to leverage more personal interactions with greater reach and are also looking to evaluate mobile platforms as a delivery mechanism to provide an integrated view of multiple proprietary and publicly available datasets to help drive better real-time decisions.

Cloud Computing

Although still in its infancy in India and other emerging markets, cloud adoption is increasing. Led by infrastructure-as-a-service engagements in the data center, disaster recovery and storage areas, there is a broad range of providers that target large organizations as well as SMBs. This fast growing adoption by a diverse range of organizations has catalyzed providers to invest in high quality data centers and innovative cloud infrastructures, as well as a portfolio of cloud-related offerings such as security, communications and managed services.

Social Media and Computing

Social media in India has seen exponential growth in the recent past with enterprises using it for customer support and customers using it to offer opinions. A growing number of enterprises used social media to connect with their customers and for marketing campaigns in 2013 and social media is playing a pivotal role in Indian politics with the government and political parties increasingly using it to connect with citizens. Much of this growth can be attributed to increasing Internet penetration - which reached 198 million users (including mobile) as of June 2013 - making India one of the three most connected countries in the world.

Machine to Machine (M2M)

The M2M market in India is in a nascent stage but growing rapidly. Indian enterprises driven by demands to improve agility and productivity are evaluating the use of M2M-enabled solutions. Among the early adopters are verticals like utilities, automotive, financial services and transport, with other like healthcare and manufacturing following closely. The success of these projects is expected to result in broad-based deployments of M2M as an integral component of workflow automation.

Hosted Virtual Desktop (HVD)

In India, server-based computing, which is also referred as "hosted shared desktop" or "terminal services," is seeing more adoption. More than 80 percent of desktop virtualization implementations are based on HVD. Organizations are only looking at desktop virtualization from the point of cost requirement, and they overlook other benefits such as full data backup, bring-your-own-device (BYOD) support, extended hardware life cycles, security, compliance and anytime-anywhere access.

Personal Cloud

Adoption of cloud computing in India is currently limited to the private cloud. Organizations are focused on protecting their applications located in enterprise app stores, as well as the content on employees' personal devices used at work. Tablets are becoming the first-choice user device and this form factor's explosion is creating device ubiquity. Users are creating their own personal digital ecosystems with their own sets of apps, games and media. Content is starting to shift to the cloud but, in the future, the cloud will become the primary storage for personal content, and local versions of the content will exist only as staged or cached elements.

The Internet of Things (IoT)

In its early phase of development, enterprises are experimenting with the IoT across a range of sectors, applications, business models and technologies in an attempt to unlock its value. The IoT delivers tangible value to enterprises through the ability to better utilize remote assets and creates business cases in three key areas - operational technology (OT), digital supply chain and customer interaction.

Collaboration Technologies

Collaboration technologies (otherwise known as workflow management or team collaboration) consist broadly of - real-time electronic meetings, content delivery, desktop and application sharing, text chat, group document markup with electronic whiteboarding, security and remote control. More advanced features include integrated voice over IP, file sharing, videoconferencing, content archiving, media streaming, feedback and polling. Real-time collaboration technologies not included in the Web conferencing category include instant messaging and stand-alone audio conferencing.

3D Printing

In India interest levels in 3D printing are slowly picking up and this is reflected in the increased presence of providers in the 3D printing space. Because of the country's large population base, high volumes and low cost requirements, 3D printing is expected to take off rapidly and revolutionize industries as diverse as aerospace, consumer goods, healthcare, retail, manufacturing and the military. 3D printing has the potential to radically transform design, manufacturing and the supply chain model in India.