Top Stories 

Infosys overhauls client engagement strategy: reports

Infosys has overhauled its client engagement strategy by dedicating senior executives to watch over each of its top customers, according to reports. Reports stated that the top 50 clients, will be waited on hand and foot by two executives, with one of them permanently based at the same location as the customer. This move came with following interactions between customers and analysts who track India's second-largest software exporter.

Apple takes orders for 2mn iPhone 5s: reports

Apple Inc has announced that it took orders for more than 2 million iPhone 5s, according to reports. Reports stated that that was more than double its previous mark of 1 million iPhones ordered the first day of pre-sales in October for the iPhone 4S. The world's most valuable company is worth nearly $656 billion — about six times its value in June 2007, when it released the first iPhone, report says.

Cognizant elects Leo S. Mackay, Jr. to its Board

Cognizant, a leading provider of information technology, consulting, and business process outsourcing services, announced that Leo S. Mackay, Jr. has been elected to its Board of Directors and will serve on the Company's Audit Committee.

Mackay, 51, is currently Vice President, and an elected corporate officer, of Lockheed Martin Corporation, where he oversees the company’s ethics and corporate sustainability programs. During a career spanning almost three decades, Mr. Mackay has held key roles in the U.S. government, and general management positions at Lockheed Martin, ACS State Healthcare, and Bell Helicopter, a Textron Company.

A 1983 graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy, Mr. Mackay is a former Navy F-14 pilot, a Naval Fighter Weapons School graduate, and a veteran of Operation Earnest Will. He later served as the Deputy Secretary and Chief Operating Officer of the United States Department of Veterans Affairs (VA), where he received the Exceptional Service Medal, the VA’s highest honor. He is also the 2012 recipient of the Black Engineer of the Year Award for Career Achievement from US Black Engineer magazine.

Tech Mahindra acquires 51% stake in Comviva

Tech Mahindra Ltd., India’s sixth largest software exporter today, announced the acquisition of 51% stake on a fully diluted basis in Comviva Technologies Ltd., a Bharti Group Company, and a global leader in providing mobile Value Added Services (VAS), Mobile Money and Mobile Payment solutions, for a value of Rs 260cr. The deal will be subject to regulatory approvals. The new brand identity will be Mahindra Comviva, reflecting the combined strength and spirit of both the entities.

As part of this arrangement, Tech Mahindra will make an upfront payment of Rs125cr towards the stake acquired and the balance amount of INR 135cr will be paid out over a period of five years based, on Comviva achieving mutually agreed performance targets. The current promoters will continue to hold a 20% stake on a fully diluted basis in Comviva, post the deal closure.

In Focus

TCS inaugurates new center in Minneapolis

Tata Consultancy Services, the leading IT services, consulting and business solutions organization, today announced the official opening of the TCS Solutions Center - Minneapolis in Bloomington, Minnesota. The inauguration of TCS’ newest facility was celebrated with a ribbon cutting event on September 14, 2012.
 
Located in the Normandale Lake Office Park, the 50,000 square foot facility will be home to roughly 300 TCS employees. The center will serve as a hub for delivering technology services to customers in the region and is an integral part of TCS’ Global Network Delivery Model™, which provides a quality of service and certainty of outcome that TCS’ customers have come to rely on.
 
“The decision to open a new TCS facility in the Minneapolis region is part of our company’s on-going commitment to grow our presence in each and every market we serve,” said N. Chandrasekaran, TCS’ Chief Executive Officer and Managing Director. “Over the past few years, Minnesota has put an emphasis on technological innovation that aligns with TCS’ breadth of industry expertise, innovative engineering strength and commitment to providing cutting-edge solutions, and will only enhance the scope and scale of our customer offerings in North America.”
 
“TCS welcomes the employees of our newest facility into the organization,” said Surya Kant, President of TCS’ North American, UK and European operations. “This facility represents TCS’ latest investment in the United States market as we continue to seek out ways to better serve our customers here and around the world.”
 
“We are very excited and deeply grateful that Tata Consultancy Services has decided to expand its operations in Minnesota,” said Governor Mark Dayton.  “The company will become a very important employer in Bloomington, and we look forward to assisting its continued success and growth in Minnesota.”

Domestic News

Wipro Tech signs Global Partnership pact with Splunk

Splunk Inc, the leading provider of software for real-time operational intelligence announced a global reseller agreement with Wipro Technologies, the global information technology, consulting and outsourcing business of Wipro Ltd The alliance continues the efforts by Wipro and Splunk to bring operational intelligence to customers across the globe. Wipro has already implemented Splunk® software at dozens of customer sites including several big data enterprise projects in North America, Europe and India.
 
“Splunk software is a cornerstone technology for Wipro customers who realize they need to effectively leverage their machine data to gain a competitive advantage,” said Dr. Anurag Srivastava, chief technology officer and senior vice president, Wipro Technologies. “Our customers often first turn to Splunk for ‘core IT’ but rapidly discover the types of valuable insights they obtain for IT and across the business. These early successes in IT often lead to increasingly larger projects in areas such as application monitoring, security and compliance, IT operations, web intelligence and business analytics.”

Mahindra Satyam launches biz insight solution

Mahindra Satyam, a leading global consulting and IT services provider, announced the launch of its business insights solution REIMS - Retail Enterprise Information Management System, which will enable global retailers improve decision-making processes. This comprehensive solution addresses key business challenges in strategic, tactical & operational areas. This would help retailers to swiftly identify the optimal courses of action to achieve their business objectives.

Gartner has quoted Analytics and Business Intelligence as the top most CIO priority in 2012 and REIMS –- a  cost effective analytical solution, aims to address this priority with scalable, logical data models, rigorous statistical models, a library of 300+ Industry standard analytical reports and role based dashboards. The technology-agnostic solution assists retailers in mining their data, predicting trends & patterns while fine-tuning dashboards, leading to better customer centric decisions. 

HCL Tech signs 5-yr deal with Freescale Semiconductor

HCL Technologies (HCL), the global IT services provider,  announced that it has entered into a landmark five year, multi-million dollar  deal with Freescale Semiconductor (NYSE:FSL), a global leader in embedded processing solutions. HCL will serve as an exclusive technology partner for Freescale, managing and strategically transforming their end-to-end corporate IT Infrastructure landscape. This deal reinforces HCL’s IT leadership in the semiconductor industry.
 
As part of the engagement, HCL will manage and transform infrastructure operations covering desktop support, compute, storage, database, telecom (network & security), process automation and compliance with the use of its pioneering Management Tools as a Service (MTaaSTM) framework and gold standard processes. As a result, Freescale will develop more resilient systems, optimize its operational costs, increase visibility into IT operations, experience reduced technology complexity and improved quality, sustain highest levels of customer service and drive innovation to existing and new initiatives.

Wipro becomes technology partner for Chennai Marathon 

Wipro Technologies, the Global Information Technology, Consulting and Outsourcing business of Wipro Ltd announced its partnership with the Chennai Runners, as the title and technology sponsor of “The Wipro Chennai Marathon (TWCM) 2012”.
 
The Wipro Chennai Marathon 2012 – Powered by Chennai Runners will be held at IIT Madras, Chennai on December 2, 2012. This is the inaugural marathon, which will be run over 42 km and is expected to have more than 5,000 runners. TWCM 2012 promises to provide runners with technology support such as RFID (Radio-frequency identification) based timing technology. In May this year, Wipro launched its first corporate iPhone app that includes a "Sport" feature. The runners can train for the marathon by using its in-built digital pedometer.

MindTree partners with Aspiring Minds

KPIT Cummins appoints Güven Kivran as MD for Automotive Operations

Wipro recognized as world sector leader in Dow Jones sustainability index

Blackstone hikes stake in Financial Technologies: reports

India printer, copier and multifunctional product shipments rise 6.8% in Q2: Gartner

Smart Card Exposition to be held in Delhi

TCS ranked as leader in Banking Application Outsourcing: Everest Group

HCL Infosystems unveils its Ultrasmart ME Ultrabook

Symphony Teleca expands Operations in India

Akamai announces Market Traction and expansion plans for India

Financial Technologies Group’s exchanges MCX and SMX winS 4 awards

Vakrangee Finserve bags Financial Inclusion project

EMC India COE honoured with awards by Zinnov

MAAC Manifest 2012 held in Mumbai

Cabinet approves National Policy on IT - 2012

Datamatics strengthens its global leadership Team

Aurionpro solutions provides Mobile App for Oracle WebCenter Content

International News

Global cloud services market to top US$109bn in 2012: Gartner

The public cloud services market is forecast to grow 19.6 percent in 2012 to total US$109bn worldwide, according to Gartner, Inc. Business process services (also known as business process as a service, or BPaaS) represent the largest segment, accounting for about 77% of the total market, while infrastructure as a service (IaaS) is the fastest-growing segment of the public cloud services market and is expected to grow 45.4 percent in 2012.
 
"The cloud services market is clearly a high-growth sector within the overall IT marketplace," said Ed Anderson, research director at Gartner. "The key to taking advantage of this growth will be understanding the nuances of the opportunity within service segments and geographic regions, and then prioritizing investments in line with the opportunities."
 
BPaaS is the largest segment primarily because of the inclusion of cloud advertising as a subsegment. BPaaS is forecast to grow to US$84.2bn in 2012, up from US$72bn in 2011.In 2011, cloud advertising represented about 47% of the total public cloud services market, making it the biggest identifiable subsegment in the forecast. Through 2016, cloud advertising will continue to account for about 47 percent of total public cloud services spending.

Google is the world’s most attractive employer

Based on the preferences of over 144,000 career seekers, with a business or engineering background from the world´s 12 greatest economies, Universum releases the global talent attraction index: "The World's Most Attractive Employers 2012". The index, split in the business category - preferences from business career seekers - and engineering category - preferences from engineering career seekers - reveals the current level of attractiveness that companies have as employers - and therefore their potential to lead the world of tomorrow.

In the business category, Google wins for the fourth consecutive year, KPMG keeps the second place and Procter & Gamble is now on the third position. "The Google fever is still hot! Students are attracted by Google´s relaxed and creative work environment, international atmosphere and innovative products. Google offers great benefits and opportunities that are hard for other companies to match." says Petter Nylander, Universum's CEO.

Also in the engineering category, Google takes the first position for the fourth consecutive year and is followed by IBM and Microsoft. "The giants in the software industry are seen as great places for the launch of an engineering or IT career. They offer training, networking and future career possibilities. Moreover, they are global. Generation Y is used to interact with friends and like-minded from all over the world on social networks every day. They have an international perspective and want to have possibilities to go abroad in their working life." Adds Mr. Nylander.

Microsoft , HTC unveil signature Windows Phones

HTC, a global leader in mobile innovation and design, and Microsofttoday unveiled the firstsignature Windows Phones,the stunning Windows® Phone 8X and 8S by HTC®. Thesmartphones feature the new Windows Phone 8 operating system and boast iconic design, studio-quality sound with BeatsAudio™ andincredible camera capabilities.
 
“Pairing HTC’s beautiful new Windows Phone 8X and 8S with our brand is a big milestone for both companies,” said Steve Ballmer, CEO of Microsoft. “Together we are offering customers a clear choice and a truly unique experience. I’m thrilled to take our longstanding partnership to the next level.”

Genpact partners with Calypso Technology

Genpact Limited, a global leader in business process management and technology services, today announced that it has signed a master partnership agreement with Calypso Technology, Inc., the leading global capital markets software platform provider.

 Under the terms of the agreement, Genpact’s Enterprise Applications Services (EAS) group will be able to provide a range of support services including implementations and upgrades for the Calypso Trading and Risk Management application software suite utilized by major financial institutions globally. Genpact and Calypso Technology will help capital markets clients increase the efficiency in their trading and risk management operations, including helping to reduce their total cost of ownership (TCO) and implementation and upgrade cycle times, as well as efficiently manage ongoing maintenance and support requirements.

Tencent reaches milestone of 200 million registered accounts on WeChat

McAfee helps protect Windows 8

ZTE sets new world record in 400G high-speed transmission

Facebook could capture 50% of global search market in just few years : Search & Social Survey

Microsoft saved $7 billion off its U.S. tax bill: reports

Yahoo co-founder Yang to resign from Cisco's board: reports

NComputing to showcase solutions at WORLD DIDAC INDIA 2012

Analog Devices introduces CrossCore Embedded Studio

Alibaba Group completes initial repurchase of shares from Yahoo!

Huawei launches SDN enabled routers, leads innovations in next-generation IP networks