Avastu Blog: Sustainable Global Clouds

SAN DIEGO – November 11, 2008 – Nirvanix, the premier “Cloud Storage” platform provider, and Arkeia Software, the leading provider of powerful, innovative data protection software, today announced that they have partnered to deliver backup protection of business-critical data to the secure, scalable Nirvanix Storage Delivery Network™ (SDN). The first of its kind solution utilizes the Arkeia Network Backup software solution and the Nirvanix CloudNAS™, a software application that turns any server into a virtual NAS gateway to the cloud, to provide unlimited, cost effective storage for long term retention of backups and archives. Combining Arkeia Network Backup, an enterprise-ready network backup solution with Nirvanix’s CloudNAS, organizations gain ready access to powerful data protection via secure, scalable storage at 80-90% cost savings over traditional storage solutions. Additionally, the joint solution safeguards a company’s digital assets with the ability to automatically replic...

We are heading for a cold and chilly K-wave winter (coincidentally I see that it is a Dutch link). This according to some will have started by 2008 and may, if the past few years has been any baseline, continue until 2014. Although there are numerous variables that may be thrown in. One major positive variable that is, if no sinister forces try to steal away our freedom and thoughts*, capable of generating and spreading enormous amount of wealth globally, is the internet, the web. This wealth is, as Alfred Nobel said, contentment and depending of what will keep you content in the future, you may have access to acquire it immediately. The variable will definitely be the today much hyped and clearly misunderstood phenomena we call Cloud Computing . During my last keynote at a recent CloudCamp in Brussels, we had several vendors- including Microsoft, Amazon, Quest etc, and we were struggling to understand what Cloud Computing really was. I just thought of it while discussing with someone...

Contract Winners: IBM CACI SRA Alcatel Lucent CSC Science App International Corp. Worth: $550 Mn Clients and Duration of contracts is obviously something you'll have to find out yourselves ;-) And this was just one week!

I had predicted in Jan 2008 about the big contraction, an implosion, the blackhole effect . I had predicted September and it happened. Watch the video yourself ( Watch from 3:50 minutes onwards ). Although it talks about the democratization of a building block we call virtualization to the Cloud Computing model, it refers to all the other industries as well, that are betting high on increasingly commoditizing markets and businesses. Now, my prediction series, as promised earlier , will come for the next 9 months. Today, I will start with the articles talking about the impact the continuing contraction of industries will have on firms, both larger and smaller. As revenues dwindle, suppliers will have to craft some contingent strategies and will have to take fundamental decisions, if not radical , to change their direction and approach. As new trends and models emerge and as they aggressively intensify, I predict a major contraction coming in the next year, don't worry we will throw...

US-based software maker VMware plans to more than double its research and development staff in China within 18 months, despite the economic slowdown. "China is one of the fastest growing markets for us and the fundamentals for the market will remain strong," said Mike Clayville, vice-president and general manager of VMware. "We are going to increase the R&D staff here up to 300 within 18 months as well as strengthen our field resources dramatically." The company pioneered the market for virtualization technology, which helps a single computer server handle the work of several servers. According to Clayville, the technology could reduce a customers' hardware expenses by as much as 90 percent and energy use up to 88 percent. As a result of the global economic crisis, many businesses are expected to resort to cost-cutting measures, which may boost demand for technologies such as virtualization, analysts said. Source

Press has never had the tendency to be realistic and pragmatic. It is either frothing over the excitement around it (Sys-Con guys are one of them, No offense to Jeremy) OR going down the negative spiral game. Virtualization has benefits that are desperately waiting to be reaped. Be it VMware with its great technology where enterprises should take up the lead and go for it or other alternatives such as Microsoft, Linux. Speculation and fear almost killed the US economy and the lack of adoption of virtualization and not going forward with the technology refresh and using data center virtualization technologies from vendors such as VMware, Microsoft etc will mean a slow and painful death to firms who are unable to get out of the continuously consolidating market. So my verdict is pretty simple (and it is coming out of the wisdom from all those clients who hold and manage multi-billion dollar assets, as if it matters to state that anyways): Whether you consolidate, get acquired or even per...

“With Visual Studio 2010 and the .NET Framework 4.0, we are focused on the core pillars of developer experience, support for the latest platforms spanning client, server, services and devices, targeted experiences for specific application types, and core architecture improvements,” said S. “Soma” Somasegar, senior vice president of the Developer Division at Microsoft. “These pillars are designed specifically to meet the needs of developers, the teams that drive the application life cycle from idea to delivery, and the customers that demand the highest quality applications across multiple platforms. You can expect to hear a lot more about Visual Studio 2010 and the .NET Framework 4.0 in the coming months.” Democratizing Application Life-Cycle Management Today, much of application development remains siloed throughout the enterprise, leading to decreased productivity and lengthy product development cycles. With VSTS 2010, Microsoft is taking the next step forward in giving individuals an...

Tier-1 global service providers such as Accenture, ACS, Cognizant, Capgemini, CSC, EDS, Genpact, HP, IBM, Infosys, LogicaCMG, TCS, Satyam and Wipro continue to increase their global presence. The difference is that service providers such as IBM and Accenture are looking to tier-2 and tier-3 Indian cities for expansion, while the Indian providers Infosys, TCS and Wipro are heading toward cities in South America and Eastern Europe. In a way, the choice of the right city has become more important than the choice of the country. It is rather the city (than the country), which represents a more accurate package of attributes that service providers seek. Thus, Cebu City and Monterrey matter more than the Philippines and Mexico from a decision-making standpoint. This study identifies those locations that are globally recognized for their “specific” outsourcing services offerings as well as the ones that are establishing themselves as specialized locations for particular outsourcing functions....

IBM today opened four new cloud computing centers in emerging markets. They are in Sao Paulo, Brazil; Bangalore, India; Seoul, Korea; and Hanoi, Vietnam, where there is an increasing demand for Internet-based computing models and skills to help companies compete in highly competitive environments. With previously opened centers in both emerging and mature markets, IBM now has 13 cloud computing centers, the world's largest network of expertise on cloud computing. At a time when organizations of all sizes are facing extreme data overload, skyrocketing energy costs, increasingly complex regulatory requirements and competition from more nimble economies, cloud computing is emerging as a significant shift across all industries. This computing model allows businesses and consumers alike to remotely access a vast computing resource that can be tapped on-demand to deliver next-generation services that consumers demand, like online medical records or mobile stock portfolio management. It a...

HCL Technologies' acquisition strategy is three fold; smaller tuck-in buyouts are targeted towards purchasing firms that bring intellectual property (IP) to the company. The company sees these buyouts are in the range of $100 million and less. Some of the recent acquisitions like Capital Stream, Liberata Financial Services and Control Point Solutions fall in this category. The IT giant is also scouting for Japan and Germany as part of its second level of inorganic growth strategy to expand its geographic reach. Apart from these, HCL's plan includes big buyouts that it calls 'transformation acquisitions'. "Next two years will be crucial for HCL Technologies because of our proactive research and search for transformation acquisitions. We are active in all three zones of acquisitions and we have a good balance sheet to fund our plans," said Vineet Nayar, CEO, HCL Technologies. The company has cash reserves of $580 million. When asked about the impact of the re...

NEW DELHI: Amidst news of pink slips at Wipro, Infosys Technologies Ltd has some good news for tech geeks. The country’s second-largest software-services company plans to recruit 25,000 people this year. Infosys may also recruit about 1,000 workers in China in the next two to three years, according to CEO Senapathy Gopalakrishnan. The company also has plans for “selective” acquisitions in the pipeline. It plans to add capacity in China, Eastern Europe and Latin America, he added at a conference in Singapore. “We’re looking at consulting and geographical expansion in Europe and the emerging markets like India and the Middle East,” Gopalakrishnan said. “We want to be very selective in acquisitions.” The plans aim at narrowing Tata Consultancy Services Ltd’s lead and boost revenue in Europe as customers in the US delay orders. Source

Sify Technologies Limited (Nasdaq National market: SIFY), a leader in enterprise data services and consumer Internet with global delivery capabilities, announced today its agreement with Google Inc. to bring the Google Apps suite of communication and collaboration tools, including email, chat and online documents, to Indian Internet users. Google Apps will now power Sifymail and chat, as well as other applications using the Google Apps platform, which would be leveraged across Sify’s fast expanding Network Infrastructure, reaching out to over a million users across India and abroad. Raju Vegesna, Chairman & CEO, Sify Technologies Limited, said, “There is a perfect confluence of the mission of our companies in enhancing the quality of life of individuals and businesses by empowering them with the Internet. Our agreement with Google makes superior applications available for communications and collaboration, coupled with our understanding of the needs of Indians, on our popular porta...

Bangalore, India, Aug. 27, 2008 - Dell today unveiled two new Vostro laptops and two desktops designed specifically to meet the needs of small businesses, governments and educational institutions operating on limited budgets in India and the world's emerging economies. The new Vostro laptops and desktops will be available through authorized channel partners, as well as direct from Dell in India and more than 20 countries in Asia, Africa, Europe and Latin America. More information is available at www.Dell.com/newvostropresskit. "Within the world's emerging economies, such as India, millions of new businesses are demanding just the technology they need, at the prices they can afford, from a vendor they can trust. Today we answer that need by introducing new products that join our existing Vostro product line," said Steve Felice, president, Dell Asia-Pacific/Japan. "Together with our partners, Dell will play an important role in bringing more technology to more peop...

With Infosys buying in UK (although that may not have anything directly to do with the euro weakening, it was the pound that took the pounding that prompted Infosys to go strike). Will the increasingly euro lead to Asia companies going after SI and other Consulting firms within the Euro such as CapGemini etc? The Ifo index had been expected to fall this month, but recent falls in oil prices and the euro – which has dropped about 8 per cent since its mid-July peak against the dollar – had been expected to boost optimism about the future. The latest weak data sent warning signals to the European Central Bank, said Julian Callow at Barclays Capital. “Even Europe's biggest economy, which had in recent quarters been supporting overall euro area growth, is stalling - providing further evidence that the euro area will require an easing in monetary conditions,” he said. The ECB publishes revised eurozone forecasts next week but with inflation in the 15-country region still double its targe...

Tata Consultancy Services Ltd, India's top software exporter, said on Tuesday it had received a multi-million dollar contract from Singapore Airlines Cargo for a five-year period. Source

And so it begins… An acquisition of this kind, whereby one of the Indian IT giants acquires a sizeable Western IT services provider, has long been predicted. Factors such as currency fluctuation, employee churn and the rise of alternate offshore destinations are threatening to curtail the phenomenal success of the Indian IT outsourcing industry. Companies such as Infosys, Wipro and TCS are therefore eager to increase the value of the contracts they can offer their Western clients, moving from application development donkey-work to the kind of consultative partnership that the likes of Accenture and IBM have with their clients. To do this, however, requires local presence and a caliber of consultant that their vast software campuses are not yet geared to producing. And while they have cash in reserves and the rupee is strong, now is an ideal time for Indian IT providers to buy those in. Analysts predict that Infosys’ Axon deal will be the first of many ‘outbound’ acquisition...

While analysts are all fretting over the VMware vs Microsoft , which in my opinion is oh-so-boring by now, IBM stealthily penetrates the SMB market globally with its pre-cloud offerings. The Missing Link installed 42 IBM HC10 blade workstations, coupled with the IBM BladeCenter E Chassis and Cool Blue technology. Students can now access applications running from any one of the blade workstations across the campus, saving time and resources. The school runs the blades in a 1:1 set-up, with one blade for each user. Normally, one blade caters for multiple users. Patrick Skagerfalt, IGS facilities manager said the school needed the hardware power to run Photoshop, PremierPro (movie editing), SolidEdge and VectorWorks (3D design) software applications. Source

Indian private sector firms have outperformed their public-listed multinational counterparts over the last five years. An ETIG analysis of financial performance of listed subsidiaries of MNCs in India vis-a-vis that of privately-managed local firms show that it is the Indian companies who have grown faster both in revenues and profits. This implies desi firms have been ahead in taking advantage of the turbo-charged growth in the Indian economy. Over FY03-08 period, while Indian companies have recorded more than 22.5% compounded annual growth rate (CAGR) in revenue, the group of MNCs could manage only 17.4%. The study shows that the difference in the growth rate of bottom line is even greater with Indian firms recording 43% growth compared to just 26% for the MNC arms. Source

NEW DELHI: Learning solutions provider Aptech Ltd said on Thursday it had entered into a strategic tie-up with Italian training firm Seven Rings International to impart soft skills and corporate computing skill development among graduates. Under the agreement, Aptech will be the exclusive training delivery partner in India for Seven Rings, which offers self development and professional empowerment courses. "Organisations today are looking at recruiting people, who besides having the requisite technical skills, have the necessary soft skills to adapt to their work culture. Under this agreement, Aptech will share its expertise in corporate computing and soft skills development," said its chief executive and managing director Pramod Khera. Source

IT services provider HCL Technologies Ltd (HCL) has set up a new global development centre named Sydney which will help to accommodate over 500 members across the region. The Sydney centre is part of HCL’s global delivery strategy to offer customers support from various locations across the globe. The centre currently employs 50 people in support, maintenance and some custom product development roles. At present HCL has its delivery centres in India, China, Poland, Singapore and Ireland and has recently announced its plans to open the US delivery centre in North Carolina, a company release said. Source