HCL Infosystem BagsRs 2200 Cr UID Contract

After a delay of over 12 months, the Unique ID Authority on Friday finally awarded the managed service provider contract to Noida-based IT hardware and system integration firm HCL Infosystems.

The IT firm will manage the IT infrastructure which will contain data records of 1.2 billion Indian residents, and issue UID numbers. It will be the largest project of its kind in the world.

The letter of intent was awarded by UIDAI earlier this year, but it finally signed the contract with HCL Info on August 7, after negotiations.

According to sources, HCL Infosystems had bid about Rs 2200 crore for the MSP contract, beating TCS, Accenture, Tech Mahindra, Wipro and others who were in the race since beginning.IBM and HP had backed out of the race.

As per the contract HCL Infosystems has been awarded the Managed Service Provider (MSP) to implement and manage the Central ID Repository (CIDR) for UIDAI. The contract is for a period of seven years.

The entire end-to-end technology infrastructure of the UIDAI will be managed by HCL Infosystems.

As the MSP, HCL Infosystems will be responsible for procurement and installation of the IT infrastructure, implementation of information security management systems and operations support and maintenance. The scope of work also includes technical helpdesk, support services and database administration.

APS Bedi, EVP, HCL Infosystems said, “As the MSP for the project we are committed to meand deliver our defined scope of work which broadly covers the implementation and the management of the Central ID Repository for UIDAI. We would like to thank UIDAI for giving us this opportunity to be part of this huge nation building project.”

Technology services firm Wipro has partnered with internet search engine provider Google to offer cloud computing solutions that leverage the vastcomputing infrastructure that the search major has built over the past several years.

Wipro will build technology services solutions such as developing applications using Google App Engine, cloud-based storage solutions that use Google’s vast data centers and data analytics that require significant computing power using both Google’s compute engine and its extensive server farms across the globe.

Anurag Srivastava, Wipro’s chief technology officer at Wipro Global IT Business, said, that the capabilities and tools offered by Google’s Cloud Platform will help Wipro offer customised solutions that meet client’s business requirements.

Wipro is the second India-based company that Google has partnered with, the other being Orancescape Technologies, which unlike Wipro, is a technology partner.


Source : Economic Times

Aegis opens call centre in Madhya Pradesh

BPO solutions provider Aegis has set up a state-of-the-art call centre here in Madhya Pradesh, aimed at creating jobs for local youths.

At the outset, Aegis Chhindwara, the second centre in the state after Bhopal, will operate the modern set up with initial capacity of 400 seats, a move that would generate close to 1000 direct and indirect jobs.

Of this, direct employment will be given to 600 youngsters in the region, a press release said.

Union Urban Development Minister Kamal Nath who inaugurated the call centre yesterday said "the government was keen to collaborate with private sector organisations for driving rural economy".

This is the 20th centre of the Aegis in India and 56th across the world, the release added.

What is Cloud Computing

How to access Gmail with no internet connection using Google Chrome

Step-by-Step Instructions

· Offline Google Mail is a browser application that requires Google Chrome to function. It works in conjunction with Google Chrome to keep a safe, local copy of your Gmail messages, so that you do not need to go online to access them. If you are not already using this groundbreaking, heavily customizable browser, you can download it using the related download link for this article.

· Once Google Chrome is up and running, access the download page for Offline Google Mail. Click the Add to Chrome button and allow the application access to your Gmail account and browser data, which is required for the application to function.

· Once Offline Google Mail has been installed, you can access it from your new tab page in Google Chrome. Simply open a new tab in Chrome and click the Offline Google Mail icon. You may be required to log into your Gmail account at this point, if you are not already.

· A message appears confirming that you want to allow offline mail, and that you should not do this from a public or shared computer. Click Allow Offline Mail and then Continue if you want to proceed.

· Once Offline Google Mail launches, it will begin downloading your Gmail messages locally. Your messages soon become available within its interface, which is based on the tablet version of Gmail.

· Click the gear icon in the top right hand corner of the Offline Google Mail interface to access the settings. Here, you can set the date range of emails that are downloaded. The default is one week of messages, but you can choose 2 weeks or 1 month.

· To reply to a message, click the header in the left hand panel to view it in the main window. Scroll to the bottom of the message and click the Reply button.

· Type your response and click Send. If you are online, the message is sent immediately. If you are offline, it is queued up for the next time an internet connection becomes available.

Tips & Advice

· You can also search your messages in Offline Google Mail. Click the search field at the top left hand side of the Offline Google Mail interface and enter a phrase or person's name. Hit Enter or click the magnifying glass, and a list of matches are displayed in the left hand pane. Click any of the messages to view the entire message within the main window.

· To remove Offline Google Mail from your system, open a new tab and right click the blue Offline Google Mail icon. Choose Remove from Chrome and then confirm the action

How To Stop YouTube Videos from Playing Automatically using TubeStop

Step-by-Step Instructions

TubeStop is a browser extension that requires either Google Chrome or Mozilla Firefox to operate. It works by slightly modifying the way YouTube works whenever a page containing embedded video is loaded. If you are not already using one of these excellent, extendable browsers to surf the web, you can download either (or both) using the related download links for this article.

Once you are up and running with either Mozilla Firefox or Google Chrome, access the download page for TubeStop. This is different depending on which browser you are using. TubeStop for Google Chrome , TubeStop for Mozilla Firefox.

· When viewing the relevant browser download page for TubeStop, click either Add to Chrome (for Google Chrome users) or Download Now (for Mozilla Firefox users). On both browsers, you will then have to confirm installation of the extension software, so click the necessary OK option when prompted. Mozilla Firefox must be restarted after TubeStop has been installed.

· Next, access YouTube using the normal address (http://www.youtube.com) or via a browser favourite.

· Select a video to watch using the search field, or pick a random video from the offerings presented on the YouTube landing page.

· Clicking any video link in YouTube opens the page where that clip is embedded in the player. Normally, the clip starts loading and will play automatically when it has enough of the clip loaded. With TubeStop, however, the behaviour changes - instead of the video starting automatically, you will now see a "Click to play, courtesy of TubeStop" link in the middle of the player. So you can now get settled in and comfortable and decide for yourself when you want the clip to begin. Most importantly - you can also make any adjustments to the volume during this time.

Tips & Advice

TubeStop also has a welcome side effect - users have reported that it prevents annoying ads from playing in YouTube before your video begins. That's two annoyances fixed in one free browser extension!

Regular expressions can be scary…really scary. Fortunately, once you memorize what each symbol represents, the fear quickly subsides. If you fit the title of this article, there’s much to learn! Let’s get started.

Section 1: Learning the Basics

The key to learning how to effectively use regular expressions is to just take a day and memorize all of the symbols. This is the best advice I can possibly offer. Sit down, create some flash cards, and just memorize them! Here are the most common:

. – Matches any character, except for line breaks if dotall is false.


* – Matches 0 or more of the preceding character.


+ – Matches 1 or more of the preceding character.


? – Preceding character is optional. Matches 0 or 1 occurrence.


\d – Matches any single digit


\w – Matches any word character (alphanumeric & underscore).


[XYZ] – Matches any single character from the character class.


[XYZ]+ – Matches one or more of any of the characters in the set.


$ – Matches the end of the string.


^ – Matches the beginning of a string.


[^a-z] – When inside of a character class, the ^ means NOT; in this case, match anything that is NOT a lowercase letter.

There are many tools available in market with the help of which you can automatically create regular expressions and of course not forcing you to scratch your head. I have mentioned some of the common tools that i have used.

RegExr Desktop app is essential, and is really quite fun to fool around with. In addition to real-time checking, it also offers a sidebar which details the definition and usage of every symbol. Download it!.

You might have heard about cookies, but what exactly are they and what can we actually do with them? In this tutorial, we will focus on the basics of cookies, and learn about their functionality in various web application and site environments.

Step 1. Understanding Cookies

Abstract

You can most easily think of cookies as text files, which are saved to your computer. On the request of a web server, your browser creates such a file. After this happens, the webserver can read and write content from and to this file. Although this seems like a dangerous feature – after all, no one likes other people writing files to their computer, there are a few restrictions in place to make this process as safe as possible.

• Web servers can only access cookies which are set to their own domain. This domain is set by the browser when a new cookie is requested by the web server, and can only be the domain or a subdomain of the web server (the web server can choose a subdomain if it wants to). This means that cookies which were set by, for example, google.com can’t be read by mozilla.com, and vice versa.
• According to the HTTP protocol, cookies can’t be larger than 4096 Bytes (4 KB) each.
• There is a limit to the number of cookies per domain. The number differs per browser, however, the generally used limit is twenty cookies. This is to prevent a single domain from hogging the disk space of the client.
• There is a limit to the total number of cookies on the client’s hard drive. This number also differs per browser, but is usually limited to around three hundred cookies. When this number is exceeded, an older cookie is deleted before a new one is created.

Cookies have an expiration date. This date is set so the browser can delete old cookies when they are no longer needed by the webserver. If the expiration date is empty, the cookie will be deleted when the connection with the server is closed. This occurs when the site’s window or tab is closed by the user, or when the user closes the entire browser. These cookies, sometimes called session cookies, are mostly used for storing temporary settings.

Technical

Let’s find out what these things look like on a technical level. Cookies are transferred via the HTTP protocol. This is the protocol used by browsers to retrieve and send files to the server. After a cookie has been requested, it is sent to the server every time a new item on the web page is fetched by the browser. Below, we can see a snippet of a server requesting a new cookie (this snippet is a part of a HTTP response).

Set-Cookie:Name =content data; expires=Fri, 31-Dec-2010 23:59:59 GMT; path=/;domain=.example.net  

Now don’t get scared, it’s all very understandable!

• Set-Cookie: is to let the browser know that the server would like to create a new cookie.
• Name is the name of the cookie. Each cookie in a domain must have a different name, so the browser can keep all the cookies apart. After the name comes the =content data where ‘content data’ is the data which is to be contained in the cookie. This data can be a text string or a number, and, as said, can be up to 4KB in size.
• expires= is the command for the expiration date. The expiration date is in the “Wdy, DD-Mon-YYYY HH:MM:SS GMT” format (Don’t ask me why it was defined to this ridiculous format, because I don’t know either. No user ever sees the expiration date, so why waste memory, hard disc space, and bandwidth on long dates?). Don’t worry about it though, because most programming languages have easy to use functions available to you. The browser automatically deletes cookies with an expiration date in the past.
• The domain and path require some deeper explanation. The domain is the domain in which the cookie will be active. If the domain is ‘ads.google.com,’ the cookie will only be sent to the server of that domain, and if the domain is ‘google.com,’ the cookie will be sent to any server of any of the subdomains of Google, including google.com itself.
• The path is the path of the domain to which the cookie is sent. This means that, if the path is set to ‘/images/,’ and the domain is set to ‘ads.google.com,’ the cookie will only be sent to the server if the browser requests a file from ‘ads.google.com/images/’. If the path is set to ‘/’, the cookie will be sent to the server regardless of the location of the requested file on the server.

Here you go. I think this article will help you out in understanding basic information about cookies.Soon i will be providing some steps for the creation of cookies so till then hang on guys. 

All the Best

TCS launches five point plan for effective e-Governance in India

In a White Paper released today, Tata Consultancy Services, the leading IT services, business solutions and outsourcing firm, has identified opportunities for improvement in e-Governance in India and provided recommendations to help the Indian government drive forward a program for comprehensive and effective e-Governance in the country.

The White Paper is an attempt by TCS to use its experience in e-Governance projects to define a road-map for India and highlight current impediments like a silo-based approach that is limiting the benefits of technology use.


The paper also highlights India’s low position in global e-Governance rankings, and the need to catalyse policy decisions to improve e-Governance in India. India’s per capita public sector IT spend is $1.29, compared to $199 in New Zealand and $153 in Singapore, for instance.


On the back of the findings, TCS has come up with a five point plan towards building an ideal e-Governance framework in India:


1. A nationwide mandate to allocate a fixed percentage (~3%) of the annual budget for e-Governance projects

2. The need to adopt an integrated and holistic approach focused on services

3. National level oversight of any e-Governance programme and thereby move from individualized e-Governance to institutionalized e-Governance

4. A Fixed Tenure concept where key government executives are appointed for the entire term of any e-Governance initiative

5. A government standing committee to oversee national eGovernance programs



S. Ramadorai , CEO and MD said: “If implemented properly, e-Governance can be an asset for the un-served and under-served areas in India and drive new efficiency gains nationwide. While Indian IT is the envy of the world and is associated with some of the most advanced and complex IT projects globally, India has not fully leveraged its potential of IT and the expertise of Indian IT industry.”



Mr Ramadorai added: “According to the WEF Global Information Technology Report, India ranks 44 out of 122 countries analysed and ahead of us are countries like Barbados, Latvia, Tunisia, Thailand and the Slovak Republic. Therefore,
there is tremendous potential for e-Governance to benefit citizens exponentially and maximize return on government investments.



“TCS has created a successful track record by implementing mission-mode e-Governance projects like the landmark MCA 21 programme. It is due to the digitization and total electronic filing system in MCA 21 that the Ministry of Corporate Affairs has been able to handle such increase in volumes of registration of new companies as well as filing of annual returns seamlessly in the last two years, said Tanmoy Chakrabarty, Vice President and Head, Global Government Industry Solutions Unit.”



The newly constituted Government business unit in TCS will focus on city, state and national programmes to help governments become more efficient, drive down costs and increase transparency.



TCS, the largest Indian public sector service provider, according to leading technology analyst firms, is redefining Indian e-Governance by helping government departments to think about IT in terms of outcomes rather than technology as an input. TCS also recommends that projects are executed as PPPs (public-private-partnerships) as well as competitively bidding for all projects and the use of build-own-operate transfer models for e-Governance projects.



In the White Paper, TCS cites landmark Indian e-Governance projects including:



Project Akshaya: A technology dissemination project in Kerala providing IT access to the entire state by setting up IT centres within 2-3 kilometres of every household.



APOnline: The digital gateway providing multiple services for citizens in Andhra Pradesh, anytime anywhere. The self-sustaining delivery model has generated employment for over 2,000 people, with over 1,300 kiosks in operation. Benefits include greater transparency, convenience, accountability, lower costs and responsiveness. It has also delivered an improved image for the government with major cost savings.



e-Choupal: Information centres with connectivity linking farmers to global markets. This initiative is one of the largest IT based programmes in rural India and has transformed Indian farmers into progressive knowledge-seeking net-citizens.

ValueFirst Messaging, an enterprise mobility and communication services company, has acquired Way2Online Interactive that owns way2sms.com and 160by2.com - websites used by millions to send free text messages to any mobile phone in the country.

The websites became prominent when telecoms regulator Trai imposed a rule in September last year that barred users from sending more than 200 text messages a day.

The all-cash deal that industry sources reveal to be close to Rs 200 crore marks the third complete acquisition by the mobile value-added services player since 2009. The deal has been funded through internal accruals and investment from US-based New Enterprise Associates and Headland Asian Ventures Fund (formerly HSBC Private Equity).

With this, the Gurgaon-based company has acquired a customer base of around 37 million unique users, second only to Facebook's 50 million in India.




On a marketing level, the websites will remain as independent brands but since both offer practically same services, the back-end will be integrated on to a single platform within ValueFirst. The integration will require around eight to 11 months, during which Raju Vanapala, the owner of Way2Online Interactive, will exit with his team of 50 people based out of Hyderabad.

After Infy, TCS, Cognizant in fray to buy Lodestone

TCS and Cognizant have joined Infosys in the race to take over Swiss firm Lodestone Management Consultants, a management and technology consulting firm. 

Source close to the development have verified that the three IT giants have reverted to the invitations to the bids sent by the Zurich-based company. With this move, the three have begun competing to acquire a company for the first time. 

The three companies seek Lodestone's consulting portfolio as it would give them an edge over others in rendering higher-value services. An expert has said large IT solution providers from India are behind multinational companies like IBM and Accenture when it comes to higher-value service offerings like consulting. He said that the takeover would surely fetch higher billing rates to the company. 

However, the Indian companies would have to make an effort to raise the profit levels of Lodestone, since its operating margin is in the range of low double digits. 




Lodestone Management Consultants, headquartered in Zurich, is a global consulting firm advising international companies on strategy and process optimization as well as IT transformation. With a value-integration approach, Lodestone pursues a value-adding combination of management and IT consulting. Founded in 2005, the firm has grown to more than 800 employees in 17 countries on five continents. Lodestone’s advisory services are primarily geared to the life science, chemical and financial services industries as well as the investment, automotive and consumer goods sectors.

How To Remove Write Protected Error For The Flash Drive

Some USB Errors Shown:
Cannot copy files and folders, drive is write protected
Cannot format the drive, drive is write protected
The disk is write protected
Remove write protection or use another disk
Media is write protected

Some times USB drive becomes write protected and deleting/Copying files or Folders on the USB drive is not Possible.

Let’s now see how to remove write protection on your portable devices like pen drives, memory cards, iPod and other USB mass storage devices.

What Actually causes This Problem?

Write Protection on any portable USB Device can be applied by the physical lock provided on the card adjuster or some times provided on the pen drives, so make sure to make your drive not write protectedby moving the lock in right direction.

But even after moving the physical lock for write protection the problem can happen due to some virus action. This happens when some virus or script which applies the registry hack to make any drive write protect when connected to the computer, In that case follow the procedure below to remove write protection from your pen drive.


1. Open Start Menu –> Run, type regedit and press Enter, this will open the registry editor.

2. Navigate to the following path:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\StorageDevicePolicies

Note: If the registry key StorageDevicePolicies key does not exist, you will need to create it

3. Double click the key WriteProtect in the right pane and set the value to 0 in the Value Data Box andpress OK button

4. Exit Registry, restart your computer and then again re-connect your USB pen drive on your computer.

Is your PDF files password protected? Do you wish to remove its restrictions? Then you are at right place. You can easily remove password and other editing restrictions with FreeMyPDF.com

With FreeMyPDF you can remove printing, copying, editing restrictions from PDF files. FreeMyPDF is a free service and does not require any sign-ups.  This service only works for PDFs that you can open and read without any 3rd party plugins.

Just upload PDF files to FreeMyPDF.com and click Do it button.PDF file restrictions will be removed and you will get a download dialog box.Save the unlocked PDF to your PC.

Remove AUTORUN.INF From Infected Computers

Remove Autorun.inf Manually here i have given 3 methods.Choose anyone Method to remove the Virus…

1st Method :

Start–>Run–> Type Cmd –>Click Ok

so just type this stuff
at c:\ prompt

attrib a*.inf -h -a -s -r
del autorun.inf


Note : Then Change the Drive Letter C,D,E,F,G….and repaeat the Same Process..



2nd Method:

This Method is Simple and Easy,

Here is a simple code to remove autorun.inf: (start copying from the next line down):

cd\
c:
attrib -r -s -h autorun.inf
del autorun.inf
d:
attrib -r -s -h autorun.inf
del autorun.inf
e:
attrib -r -s -h autorun.inf
del autorun.inf
f:
attrib -r -s -h autorun.inf
del autorun.inf
g:
attrib -r -s -h autorun.inf
del autorun.inf
h:
attrib -r -s -h autorun.inf
del autorun.inf
i:
attrib -r -s -h autorun.inf
del autorun.inf
j:
attrib -r -s -h autorun.inf
del autorun.inf
k:
attrib -r -s -h autorun.inf
del autorun.inf
l:
attrib -r -s -h autorun.inf
del autorun.inf
m:
attrib -r -s -h autorun.inf
del autorun.inf
n:
attrib -r -s -h autorun.inf
del autorun.inf
o:
attrib -r -s -h autorun.inf
del autorun.inf
p:
attrib -r -s -h autorun.inf
del autorun.inf
q:
attrib -r -s -h autorun.inf
del autorun.inf
r:
attrib -r -s -h autorun.inf
del autorun.inf
s:
attrib -r -s -h autorun.inf
del autorun.inf

Copy this in a NOTEPAD file, then save the notepad file as : “file.bat” and then run it to remove all the rubbish of autorun.inf


3rd Method :

Autorun Eater:
Autorun Eater was born due to increase of malwares using the ‘autorun.inf’ tactic to infect users unknowingly be it from flash drives, removable hard disks or any other removable storage device.


Download Autorun Eater Here

Check your website Value !!! (as per traffic)

I guess many of you having your own personal website or your business website. Have you counted or assumed your website value anytime. Or how much you can earn on daily basis or monthly basis by advertising on your site. Here is the site which can count (approximately) this things for you. Isn't it exiting. You can check your website value using it. Here is the site:


Site Value Calculator


This site is good in giving other details too. You can get your site's Alexa rank and many other traffic details too. You can also know from here that if your site is listed in various search engine or not. So its a good site to get details about our own site or other sites.

Walmart to hire engineers for online operations in India

Walmart Stores plans to hire100 more software developers in India for its e-commerce platform. 

The new platform is designed to connect Walmart's digital and physical properties worldwide giving customers and suppliers a seamless way to interact and shop across any device or store anywhere in the world. 

The company is looking to recruit engineering talent in the areas of high scale computing,network infrastructure, systems administrationand big data. 

@WalmartLabs, a unit of Walmart Global e-commerce, is the company's hub for creating platforms and products around social and mobilie commerce, and is expanding its operations here. 

Over the last five months, @WalmartLabs has been building its India operations with a focus on social and digital technology. It has hired 20 developers of the initial targeted 100. 

Company officials said the developers' headcount here is planned to go to 200, including the additional 100 hiring, by the end of the current calendar year. 

Hired by Twitter for 80 lakhs per annum, IITian from Madhya Pradesh heads to California

 22-year-old Swapnil Jain, a computer science graduate from IIT-Delhi. Swapnil, who hails from Vidisha in Madhya Pradesh, has been offered a job by micro-blogging website Twitter - at a whopping package of R

s. 80 lakh per annum.

He is moving to California in October to start his new job.

This is the first time in the last two years that Twitter has hired someone from India
Swapnil credits his success to his family, especially his parents. His grandfather, Babu Lal Jain, is a well-known lawyer in Vidisha and his father has a jewellery showroom.

TCS, Infy, Wipro to use NAC-Tech test for hiring

In a move to filter the 'quality' of engineering graduates hired, software majors TCS , Infosys, Wipro, Accenture, Cognizant and HCL have agreed to use the NAC-Tech test or the Nasscom assessment for competence in technology test.

According to ET Now, this test will serve as a pre-requisite for entry level hiring in the technology sector. Industry body Nasscom has been pushing for the adoption of this initiative. This has been done in light of the fact that huge retraining costs are incurred by the IT companies.

The scores of this test will be calibrated with the internal test that these companies will conduct for all the engineering students. The additional filtering mechanism will improve the quality of intake, Nasscom hopes.

The placement season for engineering students will start in the month of September. With this important development, it needs to be seen whether IT companies will hire in large numbers that they usually do.

Notwithstanding the economic uncertainty, fresher recruitment and salary levels saw an upward trend in the IT and ITeS sector during the January-March quarter of 2012 compared to other sectors in the same period, a survey showed.

The survey findings reveal that IT and ITeS Sector had recruited 24 per cent freshers in the last quarter of FY'12 of their total hiring, a surge of 9 per cent from the year-ago period.

Besides, salary level in campus placements was up by 8 per cent in IT and ITeS.

Overall, recruitment index has risen by 11 per cent in January-March quarter to 24 per cent.

Among the nine industries surveyed, infrastructure sector recruited 21 per cent freshers, followed by engineering and manufacturing and automobile sector (18 per cent), retail (16 per cent) and FMCG (14 per cent).

"The fresher's hiring trend this year looks upbeat with IT majors recruiting more compared to last year. The fresher's recruitment market had seen growth in terms of number of hiring and salary," said Rajesh Kumar, CEO, MyHiringClub, which conducted the survey.

In terms of geography, Bangalore, hub of IT and ITeS companies witnessed a maximum fresher recruitment of 24 per cent followed by Delhi-NCR (21 per cent), Chennai (18 per cent), Mumbai (15 per cent), Hyderabad (13 per cent) and Kolkata (10 per cent).

Microsoft‘s Windows 8 to hit release target

Microsoft Corp said on Wednesday its new, touch-friendly Windows 8 operating system will be on sale October 26, almost exactly three years after the launch of Windows 7.

That means customers will be able to upgrade old PCs to the new system on that date, or buy new hardware with the software already installed at stores such as Best Buy.

The company generally does not announce public release dates until close to the event, but has often stated that it aims for a new version of Windows every three years.

Microsoft said earlier this month Windows 8 would be released by the end of October.

Aircel plans to launch 4G services later this year

After Bharti Airtel, Aircel is reportedly gearing up to launch its 4G services in India. The telecom operator, which holds the spectrum licence for eight circles, will begin rolling out 4G services between October and December this year. Aircel is reportedly going to spend approximately $500 million (roughly Rs. 2,757 crore) to set up the network.

Aircel, which recently slashed its 3G tariff prices, has spectrum licence for Jammu and Kashmir, Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, West Bengal, Bihar, Odisha, Assam and North East. Currently, Aircel is offering 3G services in 13 circles including Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh, West Bengal, Kolkata and Bihar.

According to a Business Standard report, Aircel isn't just looking to offer 4G services through dongles and devices but also via broadband internet, video on demand, education and health care services and broadcasting. The telco has already starting working on creating a fibre optic backbone for this purpose.

Aircel's 4G tariff prices will be similar to its current 3G services.

Bharti Airtel earlier this year became the first telecom operator in India to launch 4G services in the country. Also, it kicked off a 3G price war by slashing tariff prices by up to 70 percent. Apart from Airtel, Tikona and Reliance are planning to launch their 4G services this year

Facebook buys mobile gadget focused Spool

Facebook added more mobile technology to its arsenal with the acquisition of Spool, a startup specializing in bookmarking and sharing content on smartphones or tablets.

"The Spool team has deep expertise in mobile software development and a passion for making content easy to consume," Facebook said on Monday in response to an AFP inquiry. "We're excited for the team to join and accelerate their vision at Facebook."

Financial terms of the acquisition were not disclosed.

Spool let people organize online content using bookmarks so they could access digital stories, videos or other material at their leisure or on different Internet-linked gadgets

TCS aims to hire 50,000 in FY 2012-13

TCS has a target to hire 50,000 people this year while Infosys will hire 35,000 people, which includes 13,000 jobs for its BPO operations.



"TCS is well prepared to achieve balanced growth across industries and markets it operates in FY 13. In view of good momentum, we are targeting to hire 50,000 people this year," TCS CEO and MD N Chandrasekaran told reporters here.

Commenting on wage hike, Chandrasekaran said the company has gone ahead with wage increase and employees will get hike of 8 percent on an average depending on their grades.

He also said that though there is a dip in volume growth in Europe, this is expected to pick up in the next quarter.

The company had successfully undertaken the largest ever hiring effort in its history by adding and integrating 70,400 professionals during 2011-12.

"With business demand continuing to be robust, we have made 43,600 offers on campuses for trainees to join us from the second quarter of this fiscal year. Our efforts to increase retention by engaging with our employees and offering them a progressive career path are paying dividends with attrition rates falling further to 12.2 per cent," Mukherjee said.

The company has maintained high utilisation rates in the fourth quarter with utilisation excluding trainees at 80.6 per cent, while utilisation including trainees was at 71.3 per cent. The overall attrition rate was lower at 12.2 percent with IT attrition at a low of 11.05 per cent and BPO attrition at 21.6 percent.

The average age of a TCS employee is 28 yrs and 62.4 percent of the workforce has more than 3 yrs experience while 31.6 percent of the workforce comprised of women

Google and NIIT launch Google Web Academy in India

Google, in collaboration with NIIT, has introduced a training initiative for young professionals in India, to be called GoogleWeb Academy.

It aims to bridge the digital skill gap in the country and help students and professionals capitalise on the emerging job markfor the online industry.

Under the initiative, NIIT will offer specialised courses through its centres across the country.

Google will provide NIIT with its training curricula and certification standards to offer advanced training programs that are specially designed to create a pool of highly qualified professionals and help young professionals to gain useful skills required in the job market for the online space.

The program will be initially offered in India, and subsequently launched in other parts of the emerging world

Vijay Thadani, chief executive officer, NIIT said the courses offered by NIIT under the Google Web Academy program will include certification programs for online professionals covering topics like search engine marketing, optimising online presence with web analytics and enhance business productivity with Google products and technologies.

The program will also offers technical courses for IT professionals and developers covering topics like building new web and mobile applications using Google technologies, integration across Google products, web optimisation and introduction to cloud computing, among others.

Top-10 IT Companies in India

1. Tata Consultancy Services

The Indian software industry is set to keep up its growth rate despite the slowdown in the economy.  

The National Association of Software and Services Companies (Nasscom) has forecast   a strong outlook for FY08-09 strong with software and services revenue seen growing by 21-24 per cent.
 

The software and services exports are set to hit the $50 billion-mark.

The software and services exports segment grew by 29 per cent (in USD)

 to register revenues of $40.4 billion in FY07-08, up from $31.4 billion in FY06-07.  

The domestic segment grew by 26 per cent (in INR) to register revenues of $ 11.6 billion in FY07-08. 

 According to the latest Nasscom rankings, Tata Consultancy Services Ltd., Infosys Technologies Ltd. and Wipro Technologies Ltd are the top 3 revenue generators in India. 

TCS

Founded in 1968, TCS is one of India's largest corporate houses. 

It is also India's largest IT employer with a staff strength of 111,000 employees. 

The company began as a division of the Tata Group, called the Tata Computer Centre.

 Its main business was to offer computer services to other group companies. 

 Soon the company was spun off as Tata Consultancy Services after it realised the huge potential of the booming IT services.

The company posted a consolidated net profit of Rs 1,290.61 crore (Rs 12.90 billion)

 for the first quarter ended June 30, 2008, an increase of 7.3 per cent compared to the year-ago period. 

Its annual sales worldwide stands at $5.7 billion for the fiscal year ending March 2008. During the year 2007-08,TCS' consolidated revenues grew by 22 per cent to Rs 22,863 crore ($5.7 billion). S. Ramadorai, is the chief executive officer and managing director of TCS. 

TCS is IDC-Dataquest IT best employer in IT services in 2007.  TCS also topped DataQuest DQTop 20 list of IT service providers in 2007. 

2. Wipro

What started off as a hydrogenated cooking fat company, Wipro is today is a $5 billion revenue generating IT, BPO and R&D services organisation with presence in over 50 countries.

Premji started Wipro with the 'idea of building an organisation which was deeply committed to values, in the firm belief that success in business would be its inevitable, eventual outcome'. 

The company has over 72,000 employees.

Wipro's revenues grew by 33 per cent to Rs 19,957 crore (Rs 200 billion) for the year ended March 31, 2008.

 The net profit grew by 12 per cent to Rs. 3,283 crore (Rs. 32.83 billion). The revenues of the combined IT businesses was $4.3 billion with 43 per cent YoY growth.

Wipro was the only Indian company to be ranked among the top 10 global outsourcing providers in IAOP's 2006 Global Outsourcing 100 listing.

 Wipro has also won the International Institute for Software Testing's Software Testing Best Practice Award.

3. Infosys 

Infosys Technologies Ltd was started in 1981 by seven people with $250. 

Today, the company boasts of revenues of over $ 4 billion and 94,379 employees. 

Under the leadership of N R Narayana Murthy, the company has become a global brand. 

The company is now headed by Kris Gopalakrishnan. The income for the quarter ended June 30 2008 was Rs 4,854 crore (Rs 48.54 billion). 

The net profit stood at Rs 1,302 crore (Rs 13.02 billion).

Forbes magazine named Infosys in its list of Global High Performers. Waters magazine rated Infosys as the Best Outsourcing Partner. 

The Banker magazine conferred two Banker Technology Awards on Infosys to acclaim its work in wholesale and capital markets in two categories - Payments and Treasury Services, and Offshoring and Outsourcing.

The International Association of Outsourcing Professionals (IAOP) ranked Infosys at No. 3 in its '2008 Global Outsourcing 100'.

4. Satyam Computer Services

Established in 1987 by Ramalinga Raju, Satyam has a staff strength of 51,000 employees. In 2008, the company's revenues crossed the $ 2-billion mark.

'A simple, yet extensive management model to create value, which promotes entrepreneurship, a focus on the customer, and the constant pursuit of excellence,' is the company's mantra for success.

 In FY2008, its revenues saw a growth of 30.7 per cent to Rs 8,473.49 crore (Rs 84.73 billion) compared to fiscal 2007.

The net profit stood at Rs 1,687.89 crore (Rs 16.87 billion), a growth of 20.2 per cent over fiscal 2007. Satyam is among the youngest IT service companies to reach $1 billion in annual revenues.

 It is ranked No. 1 in the ASTD (American Society for Training and Development) BEST Award, 2007.

5. HCL Technologies

HCL is a leading global technology player with annual revenues of $4.9 billion. The HCL Enterprise comprises two companies listed in India, HCL Technologies and HCL Infosystems.

 Founded in 1976, HCL is one of 'India's original IT garage start ups'. 

The HCL team comprises 53,000 professionals of diverse nationalities, operating across 18 countries.

 At a time when India had a total of 250 computers, Shiv Nadar led a young team which passionately believed in the growth of the IT industry.

Three decades later, he succeeded in creating a $ 4.9 billion global enterprise.

 The company has reported consolidated revenue of Rs 3017.5 crore (Rs 30.17 billion) during the quarter ended March 31, 2008. 

The profit after tax stood at Rs. 81.5 crore (Rs 815 million).

6. Tech Mahindra

Tech Mahindra was incorporated as a joint venture between Mahindra & Mahindra and BT plc in 1986 under the name of 'Mahindra-British Telecom'.

Later, the name was changed to 'Tech Mahindra', in order to reflect the diversification and growth of the client base and service offerings. 

The company was incorporated in 1986. Tech Mahindra is a global systems integrator and business transformation consulting firm focused on the communications industry.

 At the helm of the fast expanding organisation is Vineet Nayyar.

In a career spanning over 40 years, he has worked with the government, international multilateral agencies and the corporate sector. 

Tech Mahindra's net profit rose 8.57 per cent to Rs 196.4 crore (Rs 1.96 billion) on 6.09 per cent growth in net sale to Rs 911.6 crore (Rs 9.11 billion) in Q3 December 2007 over Q2 September 2007.

7. Patni Computer Systems

Patni Computer Systems Ltd one of the leading global providers of information technology services and business solutions.

 The company has clients across the Americas, Europe and Asia-Pacific locations.

The company has serviced more than 400 Fortune 1000 companies, for over two decades.

 Patni Computer Systems Limited was incorporated on 10 February 1978 under the Companies Act, 1956. On 18 September 2003, the Company converted itself from a private limited company into a public limited company.

The company headed founded by Narendra K Patni by has a staff strength of over 14,000 professionals.

 The revenues for the quarter ended March 2008 stood at $ 176.4 million (Rs. 7,061.2 million) up 13.1% YoY from $ 156.0 million (Rs. 6,724.1 million). 

The net income for the quarter at US$ 18.1 million (Rs. 724.6 million) down 35.0 per cent YoY from $ 27.8 million (Rs. 1,200.3 million).Frost & Sullivan ranked Patni 1st among 'Top 5 Engineering Service Providers'.

8. i-flex Solutions

iflex started as a division of Citicorp (now Citigroup), wholly owned subsidiary called Citicorp Overseas Software Ltd. (COSL) in 1991. 

Later, a separate company Citicorp Information Technologies Industries Ltd. (CITIL) was formed and Rajesh Hukku was appointed as its head.

CITIL started off with the universal banking product, MicroBanker which became very successful. In the mid-90s, CITIL developed Flexcube at its Bangalore development centre. 

After the launch of Flexcube, all of CITIL's transactional banking products were brought under a common brand umbrella. 

CITIL changed its name to i-flex solutions to reflect its growing independence from Citicorp and to strengthen its Flexcube brand.

In 2006, i-flex became a majority-owned subsidiary of Oracle Corporation i-flex posted a top line growth of 8 per cent QoQ with revenue

 for the quarter ended March 31, 2008 at Rs 672 crore (Rs 6.72 billion) as compared to Rs 601 crore (Rs 6.01 billion) for the corresponding quarter during the previous year

 representing a 12 per cent YoY growth. 

The net income for quarter stood at Rs 185 crore (Rs 1.85 billion) representing 73 per cent growth QoQ. 

The revenue for the full year ended March 31, 2008 stood at Rs 2,380 crore (Rs 23.80 billion), up 15 per cent as compared to the previous year.

9. MphasiS

MphasiS Limited was formed in June 2000 after the merger of the US-based IT consulting company MphasiS Corporation (founded in 199 and the Indian IT services company BFL Software Limited (founded in 1993).

Jeya Kumar is CEO of MphasiS, which has a staff strength of 27,000 people. 

For the year ended 31 March 2008, the MphasiS Group recorded revenues of Rs 2,423 crore (Rs 24.23 billion), a growth of Rs 662 crore, which is 38 per cent over the previous year. 

The net profit increased by 42 per cent from Rs 180 crore (Rs 1.8 billion) to Rs 255 crore (Rs 2.55 billion) during the year ended 31 March 2008.

 MphasiS was named among amongst the Top 100 Companies in Global Outsourcing.

10. L&T Infotech

L&T Infotech is a global IT services and solutions provider.

 It is a subsidiary company of is Larsen & Toubro Ltd. (L&T), an engineering, manufacturing and construction conglomerate, with global operations.

A M Naik is the chairman of the company. Originally founded as L&T Information Technology Ltd (LTITL), a wholly-owned subsidiary of Larsen & Toubro Ltd (L&T), 

the company changed its name to L&T Infotech on 1st April, 1997. In 2004, it tied up with Fidelity Information Services, a division of Fidelity National Financial to provide banking solutions

 for the Indian banking industry. In 2007-08, L&T had recorded revenues of Rs 29,600 crore (Rs 296 billion).