The year has started with a bumper crop of online frauds, cons, ID thefts, and check stealing this year. Some of them can steal your returns, others cost you your life savings or money you have not even begun to earn. Valentine's Day Spam: Valentine's Day represents one of the big shopping periods of the year. Online shoppers will be seen expressing their love this week as both online retailers and spammers continue to take steps to attract and convert shoppers. This year, Symantec has observed that Valentine's Day spam messages offer unbelievable discounts on jewellery, dinning opportunities, and expensive gifts to shoppers. The top word combinations used in spam messages includes: Find-Your-Valentine; eCards-for-Valentine; Valentine's-Day-Flowers. The e-card spam message arrives with a malicious attachment called ValentineCard4you.zip. After opening the attachment, malware is downloaded on to the user's computer. The attachment has been detected as Backdoor.Trojan whose primary functionality is to enable a remote attacker to have access to or send commands to a compromised computer. Income Tax Filing Return: Phishing emails boasting of tax refunds were sent to users in an attempt to entice citizens to enter their credentials on a bogus website. Recently, new attacks have been observed in which the phishing website states that taxes can be paid online. As the fiscal year in India draws to an end, more people are rushing to pay taxes before the deadline. The phishing website has mimicked the legitimate one in order to steal customers' sensitive information. However, the phishing page is not SSL encrypted-the legitimate page is.Increased Phishing On Indian Brands: In the month of January, the number of phishing URLs associated to Indian brands accounted for 0.15 per cent of the global phishing statistics which were all in the banking sector. Mumbai tops the list of cities that hosted phishing sites in India of non-Indian brands followed by New Delhi. Hyderabad and Aurangabad were on the 3rd and 4th place respectively. "The sheer volume of public involvement in topical events makes them rewarding opportunities for cyber criminals. Spammers find new ways to get unsuspecting users to download malicious content, buy fake products, open attachments and fall for event driven scams," says Abhijit Limaye, Director, Development, Security Response at Symantec while advising users to be cautious when handling unsolicited discount offers or suspicious emails or URLs that seek personal information.
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E-publishing is going to change publishing and change always evokes excitement in some and worry in others. I will briefly cover some of the worrisome points, but focus on some of the ways in which we can get e-publishing right in India.To illustrate it I would first like to share some anecdotes. One: A well-known TV journalist and blogger has been writing miniature stories within the 420 character spaces allowed by Facebook wall posts. His stories are serialised. Every time he posts a new episode in the story on his wall, it is lifted as is and published in Hindi dailies around the country. He is then sent a cheque by the newspaper for having printed his story. Although the payment is minuscule, it is a continuous and steady relationship, illustrating how a social media space can be monetised effectively.Two: A school principal in Meerut told me recently how excited she was at the introduction of smart classes. They get regular visits from the vendors insisting on how well these models work in delivering the “latest” content relevant to the syllabi. (It is immaterial whether it is accurate or the content is legitimately gained.)Three: At the recent World Book Fair held in Delhi, a publisher told me they get visits every hour from a new e-books vendor introducing themselves and soliciting business. Then the publisher laughed and said, “Who knows this market? It is set to grow but for the moment it is not an easy terrain, the infrastructure is poor and it is impossible to discern the correct price point.” The e-publishing milieu in India is a mixed bag. A senior production person with over 20 years of experience in the industry mentioned in a conversation recently that electronic publishing is growing exponentially in the metropolises of India and it will continue. With one-third of India’s population under the age of 30; 25 per cent of the youth read books. E-book sales comprise only 3-4 per cent of the Indian book sales, in sharp contrast to the US where e-books comprised 29.5 per cent of the total sales in one month (Feb 2011, Publishers Lunch).Content On FingertipsAkash, Kindle, Google e-reader, and the 90+ odd platforms existing in India today are making it easier for the consumer to access content. (Though for the moment these continue to be purchased as a fashionable gadget, rather than as a book device.) Publishing houses such as Random House India and Penguin India began to publish all of its titles simultaneously in e-book and physical format, and have been doing so since Amazon launched their Kindle store for India in 2012. They also retail their titles through online retailers such as Flipkart and Overdrive. However, the other side of e-reading is that irrespective of much of this content being digital rights management (DRM) protected it is becoming easier for readers to share the books that they absolutely love. It is not uncommon to receive circular letters with the e-books attached, usually of the latest titles. An alarming fact is that at times it is easier to access a book by this method than getting it from a bookshop or even the publisher directly! (It is common knowledge that DRM is easily hacked into.) Perhaps this is the reason why Apple has not made books available through its iTune store in India. But this opens the Pandora Box of piracy and its related issues.More and more people are of the opinion that DRM is no longer valid. In July 2012 Tor Books, a New York-based publisher of science fiction and fantasy, announced that their e-books would be DRM free. “It’s clear to us that this is what our customers want,” said senior editor Patrick Nielsen Hayden.Pranesh Prakash, Policy Director, the Centre for Internet and Society, says about India that “It is unclear that anyone has been demanding the grant of legal protection to DRMs in India, and we have no obligation under any international treaties to do so either.”Publishing relies on the concept of Copyright. Author and more importantly supporter of free access to read content online, William St Clair in The Reading Nation In The Romantic Period says that “One effect of the coming of print to England …was simultaneously to invent and to privatise the intellectual property rights implicit in much of what is now called popular culture.” Ironically “to a greater extent than the producers of consumption goods it was the printed book industry that also needed the co-operation of the government, and of the geographically wide enforcement institutions which only the state could provide or guarantee.” Now the conversations about copyright have been resurrected in connection with e-publishing. Some of the issues raised are how to distribute the content legitimately to the user; how is the author/artist to be acknowledged and compensated for their work; what is the feedback mechanism to monitor the spread of this information? An immediate impact of the digital publishing has been the spurt in the growth of self-publishing given the perception it is so easy to publish and reach the reader directly.The director of the Harvard University Library and author of The Case For Books (2009), Robert Darnton writes “Information is exploding so furiously around us and information technology is changing at such bewildering speed that we face a fundamental problem: how to orient ourselves in the new landscape?” He goes on to say, “Simplifying things radically, you could say that there were four fundamental changes in information technology since humans learned to speak….from writing to the codex (that is books with pages that you turn as opposed to scrolls that you roll) 4,300 years; from the codex to movable type, 1,150 years; from movable type to the Internet, 524 years; from the Internet to search engines, 17 years; from search engines to Google’s algorithmic relevance ranking, 7 years; and who knows what is just around the corner or coming out the pipeline?” It is going to be extremely difficult to chart these choppy waters of understanding the legal framework for e-publishing in India, especially from the point of view of protecting the rights of the authors and getting content across to users in an accessible and affordable manner — but it is not an impossible task.The Best FitThere are some models that exist in other parts of the world which may be worth exploring and adapting for India. For instance, the Australian Society of Authors is an organisation that protects the professional interests of Australian literary creators. The Society has been responsible for many great improvements since it was founded in 1963. It provides useful guide for writers and illustrators to consult when selling their work or to refer to when negotiating with a would-be publisher. And the rates are accepted across society, from agents and publishers to the schools and festivals visited by authors. In addition, it has campaigned successfully for a Public Lending Right (1st) and more recently an Educational Lending Right system, whereby authors are compensated for the loss of sales that is a consequence of their excellent public libraries and school libraries. This now provides a significant part of an author's income, which of course makes BEING an author more viable, informs Ken Spilman, an Australian author, in an e-mail conversation on the subject. The Society of Authors, UK also helps its members in a similar fashion.Finally there is the Breadbin Interactive in South Africa that specialises in the sourcing and delivery of digital content (text, pictures, sound & video) via customised and flexible kiosk-style distribution points. Using an easy-to-use touch screen interface users can choose, preview and burn the content onto CDs, DVDs, USB flash drives or via Wi-Fi to cell phones and laptops. The kiosks run on a customised open source operating system that enables content to be updated in real time and usage to be tracked and fed back to a central server. The “Freedom Toaster” is a digital content vending machine locally hosted. It is a cost effective distribution of digital content to the end user. It is becoming popular as in South Africa only 10 per cent people have access to the internet. Its feedback mechanism is powerful, for accountability, since it records every single download or search made on the machine.British historian Eric Hobsbawm, in a lecture he delivered in Delhi a few years ago, said, earlier we evolved slowly and were able to adapt to the changes happening around us, but now we compress a generational change sometimes in less than a decade. The speed at which we need to address the penetration, acceptance and evolution of e-publishing in India is fast, but it can be managed. There are many pros and cons to this issue. The fact remains for e-publishing to grow steadily and legitimately it will require the co-operation of all major stakeholders in the Indian publishing eco-system to work together, understand the peculiarities of the situation and address them immediately.Jaya is an international publishing consultant and columnist. She was part of a FICCI panel discussion on 'e-publishing in India, understanding the legal framework' held in Delhi on 8 Feb 2013Follow Jaya on Twitter @JBhattacharjibusinessworldbooks (at) gmail (dot) com
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Bookish is here, finally. The much touted joint-initiative from publishing biggies is, in all likelihood, set to script a new trend in an industry that is facing a series of challenges. The online book discovery platform backed by Simon & Schuster, Hachette and Penguin was launched on 12 February. The creators claim the portal will be a comprehensive online destination designed to connect readers with books and authors. There are, of course, dedicated channels for buying and launching books as well. Bookish.com aims to provide visitors with exclusive content and insider access to A-list authors. Given that not many sectors see a trend of companies coming together to cater to 'customer' needs, the publishing industry is, perhaps, spearheading a trend in order to capture more readers, boost sales and more importantly bring book lovers under one umbrella. “Bookish was created to serve as a champion of books, writers and, most importantly, readers,” said Ardy Khazaei, CEO, Bookish. “Ultimately, we seek to expand the overall marketplace for books, and whether a book gets into a reader’s hands via Bookish’s ecommerce partner or another retailer, everyone -- from the publisher, to the retailer, the author and the reader -- wins.”Bookish aims to offer a book-centric, contextual and personalised experience, “all with the goal of helping readers find their next book". Users can look out for smarter book recommendations, original book lists and articles, author and book pages for classics and new favourites. Daily updates on the site will include author interviews, information on upcoming books, opinion pieces and articles on celebrity authors. There’s more. The site will also allow visitors engage with writers across 18 popular categories in sections devoted to subjects ranging from young adult to biographies to food. “Bookish is creating an ideal destination for readers, which gives them experience, trusted recommendations and exclusive content,” said David Young, CEO, Hachette Book Group. “The website’s content and offerings will be informed by the insights of publishers, and will connect books and readers in innovative ways. We're very excited about this central community for books and authors.” Apart from the three core publishing names, Bookish will also see participation of other publishers such as Random House, Scholastic, HarperCollins and Perseus. So, at a time the books industry is challenged by big retailers and pirates, can Bookish tilt the game in favour of publishers once again? Watch this space. businessworldbooks (at) gmail (dot) com
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The country’s newest stock exchange — MCX-SX — received tepid response from investors on its first day of trading. Thin volumes in the cash segment and an irritably slow exchange website prompted savvy enthusiastic investors to return to BSE and NSE for actual trade, price monitoring and analysis.MCX-SX has not disclosed the ‘level’ of its flagship index SX – 40 on day one, starting rumours that the exchange is still not fully operational for regular, high-volume trading.Despite repeated attempts, MCX-SX officials could not be reached for comments.According to a press release issued by MCX-SX (post the trading session), the total turnover on Monday, 11 February, 2013 was pegged at Rs 12.53 crore. Data on the website, however, showed that the cash segment registered a volume of only Rs 69 lakh. Reliance Industries, Hindalco and SBI were among the most active stocks on the exchange."A stock exchange is a market infrastructure institution which requires a long-term approach like a marathon and not like a sprint race. We are working on the liquidity enhancement scheme under SEBI’s framework and after due processes it will be introduced and it will have a catalytic effect,” said Joseph Massey, MD & CEO of the exchange.The cash segment of BSE and NSE reported a turnover of Rs 2,140.3 crore and Rs 9,461.48 crore while the derivative segment reported volumes worth Rs 6,144.63 crore and Rs 76,807.84 crore, respectively, on Monday.The equity and equity derivatives arm of MCX-SX was inaugurated on Saturday, 9 February, by Finance Minister P Chidambaram. As per the exchange, 405 members and 1,116 companies have been admitted for trading under ‘permitted to trade’ category.
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It is a well-known fact that the growth of an organisation is closely linked not only with the life cycle of the industry in which it operates but also with its economic environment. However, more than the “quantum” of growth, it becomes imperative to understand the “context” of growth. The context of growth extends beyond the economic domain to the social environment and is directly related to the lifecycle of the economy. Only when the latter is understood and factored into the “crystal ball gazing” process can an organisation create a roadmap for its future. This is especially true for India. It is generally well known that the Indian economy has been rapidly growing over the past decade or so, and along with those of other BRICS nations, is poised to account for a significant share of global economic growth going forward. Two questions, however, have been relatively under-explored: Just what is the context of this growth, and what does it mean for your particular industry? India’s growth since independence can be divided into two distinct phases, the pre 90’s era and the post 90’s era. In the pre 90s era, the Indian economy was highly controlled, and wealth and power were concentrated in the hands of a few large family-business houses. Any import that entailed an outflow of foreign exchange was intensely scrutinised, which in turn lead to a huge focus on self-reliance and import substitution. There was a shortage of even basic necessities such as food and routine activities such as getting a telephone connection or cooking gas; even buying a car was considered a “luxury” that involved a waiting period that could run into years. Moreover, consumerism was an alien concept. Such was the context in which corporate India operated for decades. The economy witnessed what is commonly called the “Hindu” rate of annual GDP growth of ~ 3.5 percent. The rate of growth of organisations was determined not by skill, opportunity, risk taking or resources, but by relationships and connections, which were the most important currencies for conducting business. The result was inevitable. Per-capita income growth averaged 1.3 per cent. In 1991, just before the dismantling of the Raj regime, India faced a balance of payments crisis. It was on the verge of defaulting on its loans and had to sell 67 tons of gold to the International Monetary Fund (IMF) as part of a bailout deal. A New BeginningThis period after 1991 saw a rebirth of sound, dynamic Indian economic policy. The Licence Raj was eliminated, the government initiated reforms and the concepts of Glasnost and Perestroika were no longer frowned upon. The primary focus shifted from import substitution to export promotion, as India adopted liberal and free-market- oriented policies and opened its doors to international trade. Interest rates were reduced and public monopolies were ended, allowing Foreign Direct Investment in many sectors. A process for Single Window Clearance was set up and though not comparable to international standards, it was a far cry from the days of the Licence Raj. Suddenly, it seemed, having a population of one billion went from being a liability to being seen as a huge market. As of 2009, an estimated 390 million Indians belonged to the middle class; all of the major brands of consumer goods began setting up shop. There was a huge focus on improving education, which enabled almost two-thirds of the population to become literate. In this context, growing an organisation took on a completely different meaning. Now it was all about opportunity, resources, first-mover advantage and risk-taking capability. New industries were started and companies began following new business models, something that was unthinkable even a decade back. Globally competitive organizations emerged and there were several success stories of organizations moving beyond their core competence and making it big. Here are a few examples of industries that saw explosive growth post 90’s. India IT and ITES Industry From almost nothing in 1990, revenue for the Indian IT and ITES (Information Technology Enabled Services) industries has grown to more than $100 Billion in 2011. As is well known, India has been a major driver and “the largest player” in the offshore delivery world. The context of this growth was the huge labour cost advantage between India and the developed world. India always had a talented pool of human resources and when global markets opened, it provided the human capital for IT / ITES. Indian organisations went ahead and pro-actively pitched global corporations on the inherent cost savings in outsourcing their IT needs to India. The industry grew rapidly for over a decade and achieved scale, as can be seen from the chart below. Source – CII and Indian Brand Equity Today, as the industry reaches maturity, the context of growth has changed again. As wage rates have been steadily increasing in India, the labour cost advantage has steadily been eroding. From plain-vanilla outsourcing of basic voice or work (for BPO space) and back-office type of work, many of the IT majors are moving up the value chain to offer higher-margin services. Recent acquisitions by Indian majors signal their intent to get into consulting and niche service offerings, wherein the labour arbitrage can be maintained. Telecom In India What happened in the IT / ITES space in India in the 90s repeated itself in the telecom space in the first decade of the new millennium. From a virtually non-existent subscriber base, India has become one of the largest telecom markets in the world, with over 800,000,000 subscribers and more than 18 million subscribers added every month. Telecom has emerged as the prime engine of economic growth, contributing to nearly 2 per cent of the Indian GDP. The industry now has an annual growth rate of 26 per cent and revenues of $68 Billion. Source: Business Review IndiaNumbers are till April 2011 Growth in the telecom sector is also the result of the successful adaptation of the Henry Ford Growth Model. It is commonly believed that Ford mass produced so that he could cut prices. In reality, he cut prices first, betting that such a move would create a massive working class who would then rush to buy the iconic horseless carriages, which would subsequently enable mass production. In the Indian context, Bharti Airtel (India’s largest service provider) did something similar by drastically reducing prices, and taking the offering to the middle class and even those below. The intent was to capitalize on the reality that having a cell phone was no longer a matter of convenience; it had become a source of income-generation opportunity for hundreds of millions of Indians, the mechanics, drivers, handymen and other itinerant workers who no longer needed a fixed destination where they could be reached. They could be contacted on their cell phone, whose call charges were kept at rock bottom prices, thereby increasing penetration levels. The result was an unprecedented adoption of the cell phone as the primary means of communication. break-page-break As the industry approaches maturity (after all there is only so many new subscribers you can get), the context of growth is changing once again. In place of subscriber / month, metrics such as average revenue / user have become important. Service providers are vying with one another to move their customers up the value chain and are developing newer applications, offering new services to retain customers and gain share. But just the way the 90s belonged to IT / ITES and 2000s belonged to the telecom sector, the question today is whether or not the context of growth is ripe for the emergence of another sunrise sector, namely solar. Solar Power In India India’s economy is growing at a rate of 6 per cent, with GDP standing at an impressive $1.9 trillion. The only impediment to India’s growth is the power scarcity in the country. India faces a peaking power deficit (a shortage of available power versus actual demand) of ~10-16 per cent, which is expected to grow in the medium to long term. More than 60 percent of rural households don’t have access to electricity. To continue the growth story, power-generation capacity needs to be increased substantially, from the present 200 Gigawatt to more than 400 Gigawatt by 2020. In this context, solar energy offers a unique proposition. India has more than 300 clear, sunny days and on average receives 70 percent more solar radiation than Germany, a world leader in solar energy. Yet Germany has an installed base of ~ 25 Gigawatts of solar vs. only 1 Gigawatt in India. Against this backdrop, the government launched a very ambitious solar policy in January 2010. Since then, the market has grown exponentially. Source – Ministry of New and Renewable Energy IndiaNote – 2012 Numbers are till July 2012As the solar industry takes a breather from the scorching pace set over the last 2 years, and as India’s growth slows down to ~ 6 per cent from the over 8 per cent witnessed in the later part of the last decade, the questions that face the solar industry are these: Is the context of solar industry growth still relevant? Is the current breather just an aberration or does the industry need to find newer business models to build on the growth momentum? The context of growth for the solar sector till now has been built on two pillars — policy-driven growth wherein the sector is provided a subsidy, and access to long-term bank financing, since solar assets typically have a residual life of 25 years or so. The latter is especially relevant as the Indian fiscal deficit continues to reach new highs, forcing the industry to decide if a program which is a cost to the exchequer, such as capital subsidies or generation-based incentives, is acceptable as a long-term solution. Will banks continue to provide project-based finance to solar farms or given the recent policy imbroglio over power-sector financing, will access to solar finance also get curtailed? A Bright Future? Will the solar industry in India continue to witness the hockey-stick-shaped growth it has seen this decade or has the context of growth shifted again, thereby necessitating the adoption of newer business models? The answer again lies in segmenting the market and examining the context of growth. At one end of the spectrum are the large, multi-megawatt, grid-connected solar farms. The cost of solar power generation today has come down drastically and is around ~ Rs 8/unit (~ 15 cents/unit), or at par with conventional fossil fuel- based power in many provinces. Therefore, many organizations are developing plans to target state governments where solar is already competitive with fossil-based power, which is independent of policy support. Fossil-fuel based power is only going to get more expensive in the future, and therefore solar can and will sell without policy support. This brings me to the other end of the spectrum. Is there life for solar in the non-ground mounted, non-grid connected segment, a hitherto under-explored segment? Are there any business models that are interesting in this space? Solar, worldwide is about substitution. It’s about substituting fossil-fuel-based power with clean power. In India, it’s as much about substitution as it is about access, since two-thirds of rural households don’t even have access to electricity. Imagine the opportunity and revolution this can spark if economically viable business models are created to cater to this bottom-of-the-pyramid segment. Imagine the changes in quality of life, education and even business opportunities that will emerge for rural India once it has access to power. Some organisations are taking a very serious look at this segment and developing tailor-made solutions. Community-owned Micro Grid: In this example, a village / community can co-own a small 25 KW mini-grid system to provide basic lighting and also spare some energy for commercial use. This system could power the basic needs of 150 households for 5 hours. Can a solar operator train and build capacity at grass roots level for the sale of such system to the community (~ $90,000)? Various pricing models, depending upon the ability to pay can be worked out here. Pay-per-use model: This is the equivalent of a solar-in-a-sachet model. Electricity could be commoditized with small charges available for recharge, as per usage norms. The intention here is to lower the ticket size and offer packs of, say, 20 /Rupees (about 35 cents), 50 /Rs , 100/Rs per unit. When the balance is drawn down, power would be shut down, forcing the customer to visit his or her local retailer for a recharge. Rental model: Here, a local village entrepreneur or businessman can own a small charging station plus, say, 10 solar lanterns. He or she could rent a lantern out on a daily charge of Rs 5 (~ 9 cents), and when the charge runs out, the customer returns the lantern and rents out another fully charged lantern. This could also be similar to the Netflix model, wherein a customer pays a monthly amount, returns the old film and borrows a new one. Standardisation of applications. Here, an attempt can be made to pre-configure solar offerings for several standard applications such as telecom tower, petrol pumps, etc. so that installation time and cost can be reduced. Essentially this becomes a plug-and-play model. In each of the above cases, the key question that needs to be borne in mind is this: “What is the cost of the next best alternative?” Since most of these rural areas don’t have access to electricity — and even those that do have access face hours of power outages — there is no next, best alternative. And even when there is, the next best alternative is diesel, which is not only an expensive proposition (diesel-based solutions cost anywhere between Rs 20/unit to Rs 40/unit, depending upon location and usage) but is also not environmentally friendly. The only advantage that diesel has is that it’s easily available. But while the upfront cost is low, on-going costs are high. Similarly, there are dozens of business models that are in various stages of infancy and will be scaled up by various industry incumbents over the next several years. There will be a process of change, wherein the solar sector will see some consolidation, some new entrants will come in and a few large players will emerge. The organisations that will make the most of this opportunity are those that are able to see the context of the growth opportunity and able to create economically viable and scalable business models around that. Similar opportunities exist not just in solar, but in several other sectors as well. One billion people equal one billion opportunities. Only two things must be in place for this equation to work: The growth context must be clearly understood and appropriate business models must be created. Reprinted from Ivey Business Journal [© Reprinted and used by permission of the Richard Ivey School of Business] The author is an alumnus of Richard Ivey School of Business and is currently heading the Entertainment Division of Moser Baer
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Cloud is not the next big thing, it's already here and happening. Customers are looking for providers who understand all the nuances of cloud, who know precisely the demands of the business and offer it in models best suited to the customer. And it's here that Raman Sapra comes in. The 39-year-old Sapra is the Executive Director – Strategy for Dell’s Applications & BPO business and is responsible for driving Dell’s growth globally in the apps and BPO space. Mid-market is a big thrust area for Dell representing 55 per cent of the total global IT spend and apps and BPO is 45 per cent of mid-market. Sapra talks to BW Online's Poonam Kumar about how within Dell itself, the Apps and the BPO business is helping the company transform itself into an end-to-end IT solutions provider.Excerpts:Can you describe Dell's Applications and BPO business and its role in the growth of Dell Services?We offer applications and BPO solutions to our customers globally. In effect we cater to the nearly $500-billion application and BPO services market as estimated by Gartner.We are structured as verticals and horizontals. The industry verticals are responsible for domain, vertical solutions, customer engagement and overall programme management. The service lines build capabilities around horizontal practices that span across various industry verticals. The verticals of focus for us are healthcare and life sciences (HLS), BFSI and commercial which includes manufacturing, retail, CPG (Consumer Packaged Goods) and transportation.Supporting our verticals are the service lines of application development and maintenance, application support, information management and analytics, enterprise application services, testing, and BPO. Recently we have set up a new service line called Business Innovation Services focused on cloud, mobility, social media and business consulting.In terms of the role we play within Dell services and overall Dell, which is transforming to an end-to-end IT solutions provider with a vision of providing next-generation, results oriented solutions that are scalable and efficient. The Apps and BPO business enables this transformation by providing business solutions to our customers.One of your focus areas is supposed to be mid-market. What are mid-market customers? Who are your mid-market customers and how are they different from other customers?Mid-market is a big area of thrust across Dell. For Dell, the mid-market businesses are defined as organisations with 500 to 5,000 employees. This segment represents 55 per cent of the total global IT spend and apps and BPO is 45 per cent of mid-market, hence a significant opportunity.Mid-market customers are unique in terms of their buying behavior although they do have aspirations similar to the larger customers' growth of business, customer satisfaction, etc.Our strategy for the mid-market involves three key elements:A phased approach to the go-to-market based on market size, growth and our ability to address. We are currently piloting this in India and in the US.Integrated and end-to-end services delivering business results leveraging the Cloud. Here we see a tremendous opportunity to offer vertical and horizontal applications and surrounding services on the Cloud which will make the services modular and standardisedStrong market specific ISV partnerships. We already have the initial set of partnerships in and are in the process of signing additional partnerships to deliver our offerings specific to the markets we address.Who are your partners in evolving tools for mid-market customers?We are building a strong ecosystem of ISV (Independent software vendors) partners. Partnerships with ISVs form a key strategy in our mid-market play. We are actively looking for ISV partners who provide cloud-based enterprise applications, both vertical and horizontal.We have recently formed a partnership with Ramco systems for cloud-based ERP (Enterprise resource planning) in India to start with and are seeing good market traction in this area. The Ramco partnership to deliver ERP-as-a-service on Cloud has been an important step in our mid-market strategy and augments our existing capabilities to deliver a completely integrated enterprise-class solution to midmarket customers. We have begun to win new customers with this alliance.What opportunities do you see in India?India is extremely strategic to Dell, both as a delivery destination (25 per cent of Dell Services employees are in India) and also as a market to serve. India is home to the second largest workforce for Dell after the US. We have created a focused organisation to address the India market from an Apps & BPO standpoint.We are addressing India on two fronts a) The larger enterprises where we are offering broad based set of services and b) The mid-market where we are taking a SaaS-based approach.We are beginning to see strong traction in the India market now. Not just in the traditional services but there is considerable interest in exploring new areas like mobility and cloud.What is Dell Services's three-year strategy and GTM for the Indian market?We announced our three-year strategy in the second half of 2012. Our mission is to offer flexible, next-generation IT solutions enabling customers business outcomes.The three objectives of the Dell Services strategy are:Optimise existing services to run at benchmark financials by driving industrialisation of services and services reinventionInvest in building transformational offerings that enable customers to adopt and migrate to next-generation IT and serve as the anchor for our global expansionDevelop offers that align to and enable Dell's broader business solutionsOur strategy for Apps and BPO business is an integral part of the Dell Services strategy and is designed to enable this vision of Dell Services.We have also outlined six key strategic priorities for the apps and BPO line of businessApplication Modernisation: for helping our customers be better prepared for tomorrow rather than managing their legacy better. We have made considerable investments here including the acquisitions of Make Technologies and Clerity Systems last yearNext Gen Vertical Solutions: We are creating futuristic vertical industry specific solutions that address customer challenges specific to the industry they operate in for driving business outcomes for themEmerging Technologies: Cloud, Mobility, Social media and Analytics are our key focus areas. We are investing in creating strong capabilities in this areaIndustrialised Services: These are a new class of services which are standardized, modularised and repeatable in nature. They simplify the process of buying and implementing IT solutions for our customers.Mid-market: Mid-market continues to be our strategic focus market. It is considerably underserved and has tremendous potential.India market: India has been outlined as a very important region for our Apps & BPO business.What are the emerging technologies that will have impact on business according to you?The key technologies that are pushing the frontier of the industry are cloud, mobility, analytics, and social media along with security and IT modernisation. Cloud is not the next big thing, it's already here and happening. Whether it is Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS), Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) or Software-as-a-Service (SaaS), customers are looking for providers who understand all the nuances of cloud, who know precisely the demands of the business and offer it in models best suited to the customer.The advent of mobile devices (smartphones and tablets) is changing the way business is done today. Organisations across the world are adopting Mobility to drive organizational productivity, employee engagement and customer experience.Social media is another huge trend that is fast catching up in business context. enterprises, both B2B and B2C, are now looking to engage with their customers, suppliers and employees to drive better collaboration, customer intimacy and innovative channels of communication.The proliferation of data, along with varied formats, brings with it huge opportunities in analytics. IT players are now looking at combining data from unstructured sources such as social media, with the traditional structured data from the ERP or CRM (Customer relationship management) systems to derive business insights.How do you think cloud technology is going to evolve further?There is tremendous potential for cloud services as well as services for the cloud in the apps space. Among the various aspects of cloud application services, SaaS is already mainstream and has already been adopted by enterprises for key processes such as CRM (Customer Relationship Management) and we will see increased adoption for other processes/verticals in the coming years. We will see increased adoption by the software development community to develop brand new applications/ existing applications to the cloud thereby leading to adoption of PaaS.Cloud-based Integration is becoming a must-have as more data needs to be integrated across on-premise/internet data sources. We believe that adoption of technologies like Dell Boomi is poised for growth.How do you help customers adapt to shifting business environment using emerging technology elements?We are looking to deliver business agility to our customers. We first look at modernising our customer's application portfolio away from legacy architectures to more contemporary technologies such as .Net for example. By modernising the apps, the underlying business processes can be made more agile and then customers can take advantage of mobility, social media and analytics. And we are taking a very consultative approach around these themes by offering technology and strategy consulting for our customers around these themes.
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Citrix pioneered desktop virtualisation and cloud-based services for almost 15 years. It is now trying to focus on the future of IT to support work flow through mobile phones. Over the last two years, the proliferation of smartphones from homes to offices have given rise to a trend called bring your own device (BYOD). Now, this trend creates a small problem for the CIOs of organisations because they have to rethink their security and access policies in managing new devices with multiple operating systems. In the old days, they partnered with one device maker and asked employees to use those devices. Now they have no control over what their business teams bring in to an organization. Citrix is now creating a bridge between the employee world and the IT world where its tools will allow CIOs to integrate any device on to the existing IT system. And it will allow CIOs to control what can be accessed in the organisation and outside the organisation through those devices. Nabeel Youakim, vice president, Asia Pacific for Products, at Citrix, tells BW's Vishal Krishna why mobile device management (MDM) is the next big business and about their recent acquisition of Zenprise. Why is MDM going to be important after the acquisition of Zenprise for Citrix?There is a clear signal that organisations are now creating apps within their companies to support teams that bring their own devices. The sales and marketing teams will have their apps, the finance team will have their set of apps and the HR team will have their own apps too. All of them will be put on the cloud and in a common pool. Therefore CIOs are creating policies where each department has access to their apps based on the levels of management and if it is the senior management there will be a higher access. In the process they have issues of security that have to resolve. Zenprise completes are offering as full BYOD tool provider where the CIO need not worry about integration, security and compute needed for such applications integrated to phones. The Zenprise software allows IT teams to know if the employee is trying to use the device to take sensitive data outside the organisation or if the usage of the application denotes activity that is not under the purview of policy. It is a sort of security structure that is integrated in to our CloudGateway product. Isn’t the issue of security beyond the organisation now that mobile malware is growing in leaps and bounds?Tell me about it, who is building these malware and why specifically for mobile phones. It is a global problem. It is something that we need to know more about. But the CIO has to set policies of security even at the server level and may be control the usage of the internet through phones when accessing the enterprise application outside of the organization.We need understand the malware problem. Who will take advantage of MDM business in India and which industries can benefit from the same?The integration part will be done by the IT services companies and our partner eco-system. It is very important to find the right partners because they will be trying to build our SMB business. Small enterprises may be working out of the public cloud and will leapfrog in to the BYOD era faster than larger enterprises. So, for them the partners will have to play an important role in consulting and implementing BYOD. However, it is the large organisations that will constitute a majority of our business. The best part of Citrix’s tools is that a company need not invest in new back end infrastructure to integrate their devices with enterprise apps. The opportunity is huge because 46 per cent of Indian employees want BYOD and this number will only grow higher in years to come. Surprisingly sales teams of manufacturing companies want BYOD more than other industries. We talk of data protection, how can we manage mobiles?If the employee loses the phone or leaves the organisation the tools are programmed to wipe out the data on the phone. Mobiles are going to change the way we work and it will continue Citrix’s run as company that can identify and catch in on new technology trends. businessworldonline (at) gmail (dot) com
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Meghana Kulkarni, Head, HR, DesignTech Systems Ltd, a leading CAD/CAM/CAE & PLM Solutions provider, had always wanted to work in HR. Despite 10 years of working in human resources she still finds it tough to fire people and does not like to be looked upon as an Agony Aunt! One of her tricks of retaining people is to promote people from within the organisation to leadership position. And she should know it, having started her career at the organisation over 10 years ago. At the moment, hiring may be on the hold, but when it starts again, Kulkarni wishes people would be honest about their education and work experience as it takes too long to cross-check all the references! Her advice to freshers? Don't have unrealistic expectations about salaries and work profiles. Excerpts:What made you choose HR as a profession?I have always been interested in HR and I am happy to be working in a profession that I not only enjoy but also aspired to be in. HR division is the backbone of a company. It is responsible for selecting the right people for the company, building a healthy and conducive working environment, effecting promotions through a holistic performance measurement system, rewarding and recognising the successes of employees, and ensuring that the team is motivated and well trained to carry out the tasks at hand with utmost perfection. These are the critical responsibilities that help in building a successful company. What has been the biggest achievement of your career?After working with DesignTech for the past 10 years, I am now the HR head. I consider this to be one of my greatest achievements. My hard work has been recognised, appreciated and it has even paid off. It is very fulfilling and satisfying to see me heading an HR department in a progressive company like DesignTech. What have been the primary traits/qualities that have helped you attain your present position?Some of the fundamental traits required to attain this position are patience, perseverance and a performance driven mindset. If you work hard with utmost honesty and integrity, then success will come your way sooner or later. One just has to hang in there and keep performing to the best of their abilities. What are the challenges you are facing in your organisation?At present, one of the challenges that we are facing is keeping the team motivated. In the current market scenario where we are experiencing a slowdown in the industry pace and economic turmoil, it is very difficult to keep and maintain the high morale and zest of the employees as success is not equivalent to the efforts and hard work they are putting in. Success or results are just slipping away and hence to withstand this test of time, it is essential for the employees to not give up and continue working with the same levels of motivation and dedication without feeling dejected. What are the steps a company should take to develop and motivate future leaders?There are several steps we undertake to ensure that our workforce is highly motivated and geared up to take larger challenges. Future leaders emerge when employees are equipped to take on and successfully carry out bigger responsibilities at higher roles. Corporate trainings, performance measurement and appreciation through rewards and recognition schemes including promotions and increments, career planning are some of the measures taken by us. Also, as a company, it is our policy to promote people from within the organisation. This gives them the confidence that if they are focussed and perform well, then they will grow with the organisation. What is your rate of attrition? How do you prevent it?Our attrition rate is less than 10 per cent and it is much lower than the industry standards of 15-20 per cent. A good transparent, healthy and harmonious working environment, salaries that are at par with the industry standards, rewards and recognitions to the best performers, approachable higher management team, a feeling of being one with the company are some of the reasons we have low attrition rates. We also celebrate festivals together in the office, have in-house publication through the contributions from employees and take similar measures to promote a friendly work culture.What sets your company apart from other companies as far as work culture goes?We have a transparent and open working culture. Our management team is very approachable and we believe in participative decision making which involves making the employees a part of decision making process and taking informed decisions. Besides that, we have cultivated a friendly culture within the companies through various HR and cultural initiatives that require employees ‘ participation and contributions to facilitate inter-departmental bonding, breaks silos, and help people to get to know each other on a personal level. What is the biggest challenge you face when selecting people?Some people are not really honest in their job interviews and on their resumes. You really have to cross check and take necessary references from either their previous employer or college to understand if they actually have the relevant work experience and/or education as claimed by them. Other thing is, sometimes the freshers really have some unrealistic expectations about starting salary package and work profiles. We need to sit with them and clear out their misconceptions. How do you track employees' satisfaction or dissatisfaction in your company?Besides the performance evaluation we also take feedback from the employees to understand if they have any apprehensions in terms of working environment, the infrastructure, the work culture etc. We request them to give their honest feedback and we are happy to say that we have always given due consideration to our employees' concerns and apprehensions and have addressed them by making the necessary changes wherever and whenever possible. How important is HR to the bottom line of a company?Employee productivity depends on their state of mind and enthusiasm. HR Department creates working environment to facilitate this, builds bonding and passion amongst employees. This motivates them to contribute better and improve bottom line.How has the downturn affected HR?We have been going slow on recruitments. Though we have a few vacancies, we have decided to stay put currently and not really go on a hiring spree despite the need because of the economic downturn and industry slowdown. By adding extra work force we cannot add additional burden on the company that is already tight pressed on finances. Thankfully we are not in that bad a position where we are cutting employees' salaries or are not paying dividend to the shareholders or and not paying the employee bonuses. We have been paying salaries and bonuses regularly but are just holding on recruiting to be on the safer side. How should HR be integrated with the core line of business?Every company has one big goal and every department has an individual goal that is directed towards helping the company achieve the bigger goal. HR Department should form integral part of business planning and hence manpower planning process. This helps HR contribute proactively in achieving organisational goal.A recent survey has questioned HR's actual contribution in an organisation. Would you like to comment on it with particular reference to your organisation?HR helps provide the right manpower, the working force to the company who can then take the company to higher levels. HR also ensures that the team has a good working environment, a harmonious working culture which includes the infrastructure, inter-personal and inter-departmental relationships; that the team is rightly motivated and trained to perform their work, etc are the factors that can make or break the company. The HR department is the roots of the company or a foundation upon which the company can be built. We don’t have any doubt about how HR contributes in the success of the organisation.If you could change three things about HR practices, what would they be?The practices of HR which are difficult to carry out and I would rather not have to don them are:Terminate people - it is extremely painful and difficult to terminate people.Become an agony aunt to whom people keep coming for counselling and to voice their problems including personal issues/disputes.A lengthy process of tracking the work experience and education credibility of employees who have applied for a position in the company through references from the previous employer or educational institute.
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