Category: Software

Software

Singapore: Seventeen years ago, an Indian man from New Delhi mesmerized global corporations’ technology departments with a doomsday story many times more puffed up than the luxuriant crop of hair he sported.

The latter was a wig, and the former was just bad science fiction packaged by consultants as a $600 billion hair-raiser. But Dewang Mehta, the chief lobbyist for India’s fledgling software services industry, carried off both with aplomb, convincing businesses that their computer systems would crash at the stroke of midnight of the new millennium because old programs measured years in two digits instead of four. The solution, he persuaded them, was to let a horde of techies from Bangalore and Hyderabad go through each line of code and fix the Y2K bug.

A slowdown alone wouldn’t have stopped the Indian industry if it had been able to embrace ‘smac,’ or social, mobile, analytics and cloud-based technologies. Photo: Abhijit Bhatlekar/Mint

That was the birth of India’s massively successful software services industry, which died on Friday after a short battle with newer digital technologies. At the time of its demise, the business was worth $110 billion in annual export revenue.

The first hint that the end near came on Thursday when Tata Consultancy Services, the biggest Indian software vendor by market value, announced its business’s virtual stalling in the September quarter from the previous three months. After Infosys followed up by slashing its full-year revenue guidance for the second time in three months, it was time to turn off the ventilator.

Infosys revenue growth pre-Lehman

A coroner’s inquiry unearthed three signs of decay, the first of which shows how Indian companies’ cheap-talent-fueled growth ran out of breath. In the four quarters before the collapse of Lehman Brothers, Infosys saw revenue increase an average of 29% in constant-currency terms. Back then, Dublin-based Accenture’s growth was just half as high. But there’s nothing exceptional about Indian companies’ expansion anymore. All that investors have heard from management this year is the gloomy commentary on how challenging it’s to get clients to open their wallets. When the companies make news nowadays, it’s more often for dodgy business practices, regulatory slaps on the wrist, and senior-level exits.

A slowdown alone wouldn’t have stopped the Indian industry if it had been able to embrace “smack,” or social, mobile, analytics, and cloud-based technologies. But the vendors wasted so much time defending their legacy business of writing code for and maintaining purpose-built enterprise applications that they failed to make a mark in the new digital world Page Design Hub.

As an analysis from Mint shows, the dominant trio of Tata Consultancy, Infosys, and Wipro had 1.5 times more workers doing digital stuff last year than Accenture. But the revenue they garnered was 40% less than what the latter chalked up from newer technologies. That makes the typical digital-tech employee of an Indian vendor 25% as efficient as his counterpart at the global consultant. This gap sets the clock back on Indian companies, which have taken years to narrow the productivity differential:

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Maybe it’s just banking clients and their inability to pay like they once did. Or perhaps it’s a combination of weak global growth, Brexit, protectionism, and Donald Trump’s vacillating stance on US visas for Indian technology workers. Hoping that turbulence is temporary, investors are still paying a hefty premium for future growth. They may get lucky for a while. Still, a dead-cat bounce from delayed orders coming through would hardly count as proof of life.

The millennium scare got Indian software a foot in the door at global corporations. But now the shoe is on the other foot. Robotics and artificial intelligence are putting the vendors’ labor-intensive businesses at risk of obsolescence. Even if the concern is as puffed up as Y2K, with plenty of growth candidates in the Indian start-up world, at least for some investors, it may be time to back new horses rather than flog dead ones. Bloomberg.

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Software

PM Modi on Pakistan:

Today I am speaking to the people of Pakistan directly. From the leaders who read speeches written by terrorists, the world can expect nothing. But I want to speak to the people of Pakistan directly. I want to remind Pakistan, before 1947, your ancestors used to consider undivided India their land, worshiped it. And in their memory, I want to tell you something.

The people of Pakistan, please ask your leaders; you have PoK. You cannot manage it. Bangladesh used to be yours; you couldn’t manage it. You cannot manage Gilgit, Baltistan, Pakhtun, Balochistan, Sindh…and you are talking about Kashmir. The people of Pakistan must ask their leaders first to give secure lives to their citizens.

 

People of Pakistan ask your leaders, Both our countries got freedom together. Why do India export software and your country export terrorists?

I want to tell the people of Pakistan to confuse you; your leaders have worked for ages. I am ready to face that challenge. I want to tell the people, If you have what it takes, let’s compete to end poverty in our countries. Let’s see who gets there first. People of Pakistan and India will like this competition.

The youth of Pakistan, come, let’s fight. Let’s see who ends unemployment first – India or Pakistan. Let’s fight against illiteracy. Newborns, pregnant mothers die in both India and Pakistan. Let’s see who can save them first.

And leaders of Pakistan hear this. The sacrifice of 18 of our soldiers will not go in vain. India has succeeded in isolating you in the world. We will ramp it up and force you to live alone in the world. That day is not far when Pakistan’s people will get in the fray to fight against their leaders and terrorists. My dear countrymen, the future of our nation is connected to peace and good thoughts.

Our country wins when we stand together, say in one voice, have one resolution. Today 1.25 billion Indians are ready to pay any price for our pride and peace. That’s why I see a glorious future for India. On Deen Dayal Upadhyay’s birth anniversary, my dear countrymen have decided to re-dedicate ourselves to work for the poor.

In the 21st century, our goal should be that India should be free from poverty, full of prosperity. India should aim to be Free from injustice, land of justice, Free from filth, land of cleanliness, free from corruption, land of transparency, free from unemployment, and employment.

India should be Free from crimes against women, a land of dignity for women, free from disappointment, land of hope.
On Deen Dayal Upadhyay’s birth anniversary, let these are our guiding goals.

PM Modi on terrorism:

We’ve heard it for a while – the 21st century is Asia’s century. And Asia has all it takes to achieve that. But there is one country in Asia that is working towards thwarting that vision. It is doing all it can to ensure that Asia is bloodied; it is bruised by violence and falls prey to terror. Wherever terrorism is happening in Asia, the blame is on one country.

Not just India, every country in Asia believes this. One country is exporting terror everywhere. Afghanistan, Bangladesh, all neighboring countries, and in the world, wherever a terror attack takes place. It emerges either the terrorist set out from here or after the attack like Osama Bin Laden took refuge here. Brothers and sisters, the people of Kerala, know what terrorism looks like.

Kerala’s daughters, nurses, were taken away by terrorists. Entire India was tensed. But entire Kerala saw how the government in Delhi returned the daughters of Kerala to their homes. Terrorism is an enemy of humanity. Humanitarians all over the world have to unite and condemn terror. India never has and never will bow down to terror; it will defeat terror.

The entire country is seeing the effects of terror. In Jammu and Kashmir’s Uri, 18 soldiers had to sacrifice their lives.
Let terrorists hear this; India will never forget this Page Design Web. In the last few months, 17 times, terrorists in groups of 4 or 6 have tried crossing the border to spread destruction. But our brave soldiers thwarted those efforts; they slew them on the LoC. In the last few months, our soldiers have killed 110 terrorists – the highest in recent years.

Saving the countries from these 17 possible attacks was done by our soldiers; they stood guard and secured our citizens; we are proud of their service, their sacrifice. You can imagine, the neighboring country succeeded in one attack, and 17 soldiers had to fall prey.

If they had succeeded in all 17 incidents, what would have happened?

Our soldiers, our police, all our security forces have won these battles not just because of the weapons. Weapons are toys. Soldiers win on confidence, and India’s confidence is flying at its highest. This is our strength.

Leaders of the neighboring country said will fight for 1,000 years; where did they disappear? We can’t see them anymore. And today’s leaders read speeches written by terrorists and singing about Kashmir.

PM Modi on BJP Ideology:

In the last century, India’s political life was influenced by three people, Mahatma Gandhi, Deen Dayal Upadhyaya, and Ram Manohar Lohia. When elected members of the NDA chose me as their leader, and when I gave the first speech on the Parliament floor, I had said this government is dedicated to the poor.

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This comes from the thinking of Mahatma Gandhi and Deen Dayal Upadhyay. Our directive is based on their ideology. And I want to assure BJP workers of Kerala, the service you have given, the injustices you have endured, the sacrifices you have made will not go in vain. They will bear fruit, and the BJP will herald progress in Kerala.

Kerala has all the capability to become India’s top state. The BJP and the Indian government will be ready for all it takes to make this happen. India is moving forward with one mantra- Sabka Saath, Sabka Vikas. The whole world recognizes India to be the world’s fastest-growing major economy.

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Software

In March this year, Red Hat became the world’s first open-source software (OSS) solutions company to cross $2 billion in revenue. The term open source implies ‘free’ access to software which developers can modify. Not many thought Red Hat would be successful when the company was founded in 1993. However, it has proved its naysayers wrong with a $14.78 billion market cap (as of September 30), $600 million revenue in Q2 FY17, and entry into the Forbes list of the World’s Most Innovative Companies in 2016 for the fourth time. Jim Whitehurst, Red Hat’s president, and CEO, and Rajesh Rege, its India MD, tell Forbes India why enterprises are now opting for open-source software. Edited excerpts:

Open source software

Q. How do enterprises use open-source software?

Whitehurst: Open source refers to the fact that the source code is open and can modify it. There are typically OSS alternatives at almost every layer of the software stack in terms of enterprise use. It would be impossible to get through a day without using a fair amount of open source. For instance, if you go on the web, the things you are touching [by browsing, streaming, or chatting] are open source; if you get money out of a cash machine, you are going to hit banking systems built on open source; airlines’ reservation systems are almost entirely built on Linux (an open-source operating system).

Q. What are the benefits of using OSS?

Whitehurst: It is a dramatically lower cost because you are not paying the license fee for the software upfront; you are paying a subscription, service, and maintenance fee. Plus, today, most innovations in technology are happening in open source—from big data to DevOps (a combination of development and operations). Google, Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn do their entire infrastructure work using open source. If you want to build a private cloud, you could use the same technology that Google uses to do that. The alternative is to wait until a proprietary software (whose source code is known only to the person who created it, thereby not allowing any modification) vendor builds something that looks similar and then buys that.

Q. How are companies in India using OSS?

Rege: The Bombay Stock Exchange is built end-to-end on open source on Red Hat. The Indian Railways uses it for managing the IRCTC portal, which they re-architected using Red Hat components. We also serve customers in banks, e-commerce, and other sectors like oil and gas and telco. Even the UIDAI—Aadhaar project—is built end-to-end on Red Hat Page Design Shop.

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Q. How important is India as a market for Red Hat?

Whitehurst: In terms of employees, it is our second-largest market after the US. It’s a great market for us because of its size and because it is dynamic. Many massive projects are happening here, and we get a large share of the new projects. As a company, we grow at 20 percent; we are growing more than twice the figure. Also, there are more developers here than anywhere else in the world.

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