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Rolta to invest Rs 250 cr to set up IT Park in Kolkata

MUMBAI; Rolta India plans to set up a park in Kolkata at an investment of Rs 250 crore as part of its expansion plan. The park would have facilities for delivery of IT-based geospatial services, engineering design services, software development and ERF implementation services worldwide, a company release said. The facility is likely to provide jobs to as many as 5,000 technical professionals and domain experts, tapping talent in West Bengal, it said.

Zensar Technologies opens centre in Poland

PUNE: Zensar Technologies, a software services and business process outsourcing services provider, is opening its first near shore centre in Gdansk, Poland. This is the first centre to be opened in Poland by an Indian outsourcing company. Zensar said it will employ 350 people over the next 30 months, investing over $2 million in the new centre.

Grooming for Premji Junior begins, Rishad joins Wipro

THE succession plan at Wipro, the third largest software services exporter from India, seems to be well laid out with the owner’s son coming into the company, though for now, as an employee. Rishad Premji, the elder son of Azim Premji, chairman Wipro, will be joining the company in July putting an end to long-term speculation on to whom Premji Sr. would pass on the baton.
“Rishad Premji is going to join Wipro at a level commensurate with his background and experience. His joining has been approved by the Board and is subject to shareholder approval. This is required statutorily because he is a relative of a director,” Wipro stated in a formal announcement.

In a conference call from the US, Pratik Kumar, executive VP - HR, Wipro, pointed out that it was not the company which took the initiative in bringing in Rishad, but he (Rishad) had expressed his desire to come back to India. “He has high level of familiarity with Wipro,” he added. Rishad would be joining the financial services vertical as business manager and would be reporting to a senior VP. He is an MBA from Harvard Business School and has had stints in GE and Bain & Co. His last place of work was with Bain in London as business development executive handling financial systems, Mr. Kumar clarified that Rishad was coming into Wipro as an employee and not on the board of directors, though adding, “it is a logical possibility given the shareholding structure that he may come on the board.

Birlasoft hire 2,500 IT executives

BIRLASOFT, a software company of the 1.2 billion C K Birla group, will be recruiting 2,500 IT professionals in the next one year to meet the demands of its rapid expansion, an official said on Sunday. Birlasoft’s head-count has doubled to 4,200 employees worldwide in the last two years. About one-third of the professionals will be picked up directly from engineering and MCA campuses in Uttar Pradesh, Punjab, Haryana and south India. The rest will be lateral placements for middle and senior-level positions in different technologies and domains.

“Our earlier intake from UP campuses has proved to be fruitful. The fresh students displayed good learning skills and ability to adjust to corporate environment,” Narendra Puppala vice-president, human resources (global), said.

The recently launched Birlasoft Academy is collaborating with IT institutions to update their courses and teaching in keeping with the latest needs of the IT industry, he said. “The academy is scaling up its operations as more and more IT campuses are realising the need for regular and vigorous interaction with the IT industry". Birlasoft, which has registered a quantum leap in its revenues last fiscal, has launched three software development centres in last three years.
The company is operating three centres in Noida and one each in Chennai, Bangalore and Hyderabad, apart from its units abroad. A new facility is coming up in Noida, while the Bangalore centre will be more than doubling its manpower from 400 to 900 soon, Puppala said.

Hitachi & Oracle sell China anti-piracy tags

JAPANESE electronics conglomerate Hitachi and US software firm Oracle will jointly market wireless tags in China that can be used to identify counterfeit goods, the Nikkei business daily said on Sunday.

Piracy of branded and copyright goods has been a source of trade friction between China and several of its trade partners, and the Chinese government is taking steps to crack down on counterfeiting and pro-tea intellectual property rights.

Hitachi and Oracle expect increasing demand for so-called IC, or integrated circuit, tags for a wide range of products, including cash vouchers, luxury items and home appliances, the Nikkei said, without giving a source for the information.

No one at Hitachi or the local unit of Oracle could be reached for comment. IC tags are tiny chips that can store basic information about a product such as where it was produced and by which company. A reader can be used to retrieve that information and verify the authenticity of the product. The tags will be made by Hitachi and cost about 10 yen ($0.08) each, the Nikkei said.

As an initial step, Hitachi and Oracle will sell the tags for use in tickets for big events such as the Beijing Olympics in 2008 and the 2010WorldExpoinShang-hai. The tags would be embedded in the tickets and be used to prevent the use of fake ones, the paper said. The two companies will promote use of the tags along with the Tokyo-based Ubiquitous ID Center, which issues and manages tags, the newspaper said.

Cisco lining up acquisition targets for expansion in India

CISCO, the $33.5 billion technology giant, is bullish on making acquisitions in India as it goes about expanding its array of solutions and products. “There is a very strong possibility that we might acquire companies in India in the area of emerging technologies,” said, CPO & Senior VP of Cisco Dennis Powell. He was on his first visit to India last week.

Cisco has a good track record of acquiring companies. The company has acquired 121 companies in its two decade-long history. Mr Powell claims that 75% of these buyouts were successful. Some of its acquisitions had operations in India, but it has never acquired a company in India till now.

Mr Powell said it would be looking at companies, which are in the early stages of technology lifecycle.

Cisco now has an array of products going beyond its traditional market of switches and routers. It has moved into new product areas where solutions are built around the Internet protocol network focused on voice, video, data and mobility. Some of its recent acquisitions include companies like Scientific Atlanta and WebEx. Cisco has committed over $100 million as venture capital investment for India. It has so far invested in four Indian companies including India games and Bharti Telesoft.

An acquisition here fits into Cisco’s strategy of making India its next global hub. In December last year it set up its second globalization centre in Bangalore. Wim Elfrink, chief globalization officer, Cisco who is based in Bangalore, said its operations in India are based on three pillars - innovation, talent and growth. He said Cisco is looking at developing products from India, which will be introduced first in the developing countries and then be exported to developed nations. He termed this as a process of “reverse innovation".

Cisco has already started to move around 20 % of its top-level staff to India as it looks for new emerging markets for growth. Mr Powell said it has experienced over 30% growth in the Indian market for the last 6-7 quarters.

Cisco has committed an investment of over a billion dollars in India spread over the next 3-4 years. This includes a new R&D centre being built at a cost of $750 million. Mr Powell said it is looking at building a critical mass in India and was not here for labour arbitrage. Cisco employs over 2,200 people in India in R&D, sales and business support functions. Besides this, it has also has joint development centres with Wipro, Infosys, HCL, Satyam and Zensar Technologies.

Dell inaugurates new R&D facility in Bangalore
Bangalore: Dell on Thursday inaugurated its new state-of-the-art R&D centre here aimed at developing end-to-end products and solutions for the next generation of network servers, data storage systems and software products. “The centre would undertake end-to-end system designing of global products and focus on the enterprise segment,” said Dell India R&D centre country manager Vivek Mansingh. The first hardware product to be rolled out from this centre by this year end would be a two socket server. The entire concept, mechanical electrical and software aspect would be designed here, said Dell India R&D director of enterprise engineering Kefetew Selassie.