Reporter's Diary

Idhries Ahmad and Pratima Harigunani MUMBAI, INDIA: Distinguished Indian writer and diplomat Shashi Tharoor congratulated India’s response to the recent two attacks on India’s image globally. While speaking at the NASSCOM India Leadership Forum here today, he said that both the industry and the government of India have ensured an effective response to the Satyam episode as well as the Mumbai terror attack. … Read entire article »

Invest in technologies, where payback is closer to the horizon Idhries Ahmad NEW DELHI, INDIA: In the first part of our speaker series for CIOL C Change 2009, Idhries Ahmad of CIOL catches up with Prasanto Kumar Roy, President & Chief Editor, ICT Publications, CyberMedia. Roy, a veteran in enterprise technology trends, and with more than twenty years experience in writing for CIO community, feels the current uncertain times will be putting enormous pressure on CIO across the board to deliver faster with whatever resources they have been already allocated. “If certain level of service was acceptable in better times, the tolerance to service level violations now will be extremely low ,”says Roy Roy also points that, going forward this year, CIO will be expected to make significant contributions in helping companies achieve higher growth … Read entire article »

NEW DELHI, INDIA: British Telecom is excited about Indian market opportunity and is targeting twenty percent of networked IT market in India, which BT expect to be around 24 billion Euro in 2010-11. The company has also ruled out any lay offs in India in response to the global slow down and expects to continue its positive momentum in the country. British Telecom had recently announced that it would cut 10,000 jobs by March 2009, following an 11 per cent dip in its profit after tax for the first half of the current financial year. The company had laid off 4000 employees directly recruited by BT and remaining 6000 which were on the job rolls of contractors, consultants and agency staff working for BT. Speaking to CIOL, Allen Ma, President, BT Asia Pacific, … Read entire article »

As a test engineer, you play an important role in ensuring that the final software application or product meets the desired quality standards, and the success or failure of the application or product largely depends on its quality Idhries AhmadNEW DELHI, INDIA: Software testers have traditionally thought off by their more ‘advantaged’ developer community as some ones who don’t get involved in high-end and challenging work, and hence don’t deserve the attention and recognition that they themselves command. However, Ramanna, strongly feels that software testers are no less cerebral to software developers when it comes to their contribution to the software development life-cycle activity. The notion  “Testing is inferior to development, says Ramana,  is pure myth and needs to be corrected. “Software testing is as important as any other software development lifecycle activity. … Read entire article »

Recession rather than a threat, should be seen as blessing in disguise by CIO’s as it is forcing them to have a re-look at their existing IT infrastructure and fine tune it to streamline processes, improve productivity and reduce costs Idhries Ahmad NEW DELHI, INDIA: Current uncertain times are putting extreme pressures on CIO’s across verticals to make sure IT investments already made or planned are optimised to the hilt. Making every dollar count, puts onus on CIO to go for prudent IT infrastructure restructuring and re- tuning it to help company save costs and ride over the tough times. Allen Ma, President, BT Asia Pacific, feels, recession rather than a threat, should be seen as blessing in disguise by CIO’s as it is forcing them to have a re-look at their … Read entire article »

Roll out to start with North East Idhries Ahmad NEW DELHI, INDIA: Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited (BSNL) will be rolling out 3G services by the end of first month of next year. The incumbent will be initially rolling out commercial 3G services in the North East region following which the company will roll the services in phases in other parts of country. “We are targeting end of next month as date for roll out of 3G services in the country. We have completed the testing of our networks and are ready for roll out of 3G services in North East”, said Kuldeep Goyal, CMD, BSNL. However, Goyal didn’t confirm which cities in North East will see the first roll out of 3G services. Goyal added BSNL will be rolling out 3G services in … Read entire article »

Phishers over the last few years have redoubled their efforst to dupe innocents of their hard earned money Idhries Ahmad NEW DELHI, INDIA: As I logged into my ICICI online bank account to check whether my salary has been credited or not, I had a strange eerie feeling that some thing was not right. The page design looked same as it looked every time I opened it in Microsoft Internet Explorer. The frames were correct, the logos and colours were all right but something was a miss. Some thing was not right. Some thing was phishy. The ICICI Bank’s online URL, though visibly correct, was showing too many characters to my liking. The digital signature supposed to be present on right bottom hand side of page was not there. The words of Patrick Runald, … Read entire article »

Expects Canon D-SLR to be big hit among Indian consumers by 2009 Idhries Ahmad NEW DELHI, INDIA: Canon India is targeting a growth of 35-40% for its Imaging Communication Products division (ICP) for 2009. The company is also betting big on Indian market for its latest range of new digital imaging products particularly Canon D-SLR, which company expects to be big hit among Indian consumers by 2009. Speaking to CIOL, Shunichi Senda, Director, ICP, Canon India, said Canon India expected to continue its positive momentum in the country. “We are targeting the ICP division to grow by 35-40% and we expect Canon new range of cameras to fuel this growth”, said Shenda. … Read entire article »

By 2012, market research firm, iLocus, projects 18.9 million Class 4 and 17.6 million Class 5 NGN lines to be deployed in carrier networks in India Idhries Ahmad NEW DELHI, INDIA: India will be one of the leading Nextgen voice markets across the globe in the next few years. Carriers in the country have already drawn up plans for deployment of more than 14.9 million Class 4 Next Generation (NGN) ports and over 4.1 million Class 5 NGN lines. These are findings of a report ‘Carrier Nextgen Voice Networks in India’ published by leading market research firm, iLocus. The report adds that an estimated volume of 1.23 million Class 4 softswitch and gateway ports have already been deployed for commercial use by carriers in India. By 2012, iLocus, projects 18.9 million Class 4 … Read entire article »

The way demographics are changing across the world, the new world order will not entail the concepts of offshore or outsource, says Nasscom president Idhries Ahmad NEW DELHI, INDIA: Nasscom president Som Mittal believes the ground-breaking concepts of outsourcing and off shoring that catapulted Indian IT industry to the center stage in world economy will get out from our dictionary, as the new world order will not entail the concepts of offshore or outsource. “The word outsourcing and off shoring will get out from our dictionary because you have to answer who you are outsourcing to and who you are off shoring to,” says Mittal. “Indian IT companies operate out of 27 countries and in 75 cities have their own centers…. So if that is the case, then it is actually part of delivery … Read entire article »