France-based IT company NetASQ launched its India operation here today and said it was investing $1 million initially to capture 20 per cent of the estimated $2 billion network security solutions market in the country.
A subsidiary of Airbus group, the company would launch U series firewalls and Mfiltro anti-spam appliances in India.
"We will be targeting the mid and high range segments," Dominique Meurisse, Executive Vice president (Sales and Marketing) of the France-based company, said.
The French company will be running its operations with technical support from the city-based Zoom Technologies. Meurisse quoted a report by consultancy firm Frost and Sullivan which says the network security solution market is expected to grow further.
MH Noble, Managing Director, Zoom Technologies, said a 24X7 multilingual support centre for NetASQ in the city had been set up.
NetASQ, which operates in 45 countries, has managed a growth of 30 per cent and is anticipating reaching 100 million Euros next year.
Friday, December 4, 2009
Infosys, IT market
No one’s good enough for Infosys' Engg prize
You thought India produces one of the best engineers across the globe? Not really (seems like)! For, Indian IT giant Infosys Technologies has reportedly failed to find a worthy candidate for its Infosys Engineering Science Prize 2009.
The company has decided not to give the prize in that category to anyone this year. Infosys’ chief operating officer (COO), SD Shibulal, told a business daily that there were 34 nominees for the engineering and computer science prize but even after relaxing the age limit to 55 years, the jury could not find anyone who met all the criteria of the Infosys Prize. So, the jury has taken unanimous decision to not award the prize for the engineering sciences discipline this year.
The company has named three scientists and two academic experts as winners of Infosys Prize 2009 for outstanding contributions to scientific research.
The winner in physical sciences is Thanu Padmanabhan of Inter-University Centre for Astronomy and Astrophyics, Pune, in recognition of his contribution to a deeper understanding of Einstein’s theory of gravity in the context of thermodynamics. For mathematical sciences, Ashoke Sen of Harish Chandra Research Institute at Allahabad was given the prize in recognition of his contributions to mathematical physics. For life sciences, K VijayRaghavan of National Centre of Biological Sciences in Bangalore got the award.
The winner in the social sciences and economics category is Abhijit Vinayak Banerjee of Massachusetts Institute of Technology for his contributions to the economic theory of development. Upinder Singh of the University of Delhi won an award for her contributions as an outstanding historian of ancient and early medieval India.
The company has decided not to give the prize in that category to anyone this year. Infosys’ chief operating officer (COO), SD Shibulal, told a business daily that there were 34 nominees for the engineering and computer science prize but even after relaxing the age limit to 55 years, the jury could not find anyone who met all the criteria of the Infosys Prize. So, the jury has taken unanimous decision to not award the prize for the engineering sciences discipline this year.
The company has named three scientists and two academic experts as winners of Infosys Prize 2009 for outstanding contributions to scientific research.
The winner in physical sciences is Thanu Padmanabhan of Inter-University Centre for Astronomy and Astrophyics, Pune, in recognition of his contribution to a deeper understanding of Einstein’s theory of gravity in the context of thermodynamics. For mathematical sciences, Ashoke Sen of Harish Chandra Research Institute at Allahabad was given the prize in recognition of his contributions to mathematical physics. For life sciences, K VijayRaghavan of National Centre of Biological Sciences in Bangalore got the award.
The winner in the social sciences and economics category is Abhijit Vinayak Banerjee of Massachusetts Institute of Technology for his contributions to the economic theory of development. Upinder Singh of the University of Delhi won an award for her contributions as an outstanding historian of ancient and early medieval India.
IT market
MphasiS to replace pay hike with bonus
Mid-tier software services firm MphasiS, which is owned by Hewlett Packard (HP), plans to replace its annual salary increment for its staff with a one-time bonus in order to ensure more variability in its employee wage bill and align it better with the company’s performance.
The bonus, termed as a recompense bonus, was introduced earlier this year, replacing increments, and is likely to be extended over next few years, said a senior company official.
“We have started innovating on the compensation model. We will not do salary increases... If the company is doing well, the employees will be compensated for it,” Elango R, chief human resources officer, MphasiS, said.
Unlike some top IT firms, which already have a variable pay structure in place, MphasiS had a predominantly fixed salary structure till 2009. By shifting to a one-time bonus, which is linked the employee’s performance and the company’s performance, MphasiS aims to make about 20% of its employee wage bill variable in the next three years.
In 2009, the demand slump and the need to conserve cash forced the management to reach out to employees, and ask them to forgo salary hikes, customarily given in March or April. Elango said the company didn’t do any layoffs or salary cuts, and employees were promised they would be compensated when the company performed well. True to promise, MphasiS recently gave a recompense bonus of 10% and higher than that will be paid out in December.
MphasiS, which announced results for its fiscal ended October 2009 last week, posted a sharp 44% rise in revenue to Rs 4,283.3 crore and a two-fold jump in net profit to Rs 908 crore. The company also intends to resume hiring and will hire as many as 1,500 experienced professionals to fill open positions in the current quarter alone.
In the October 2009 quarter, it had opted not to hire, as it had to absorb around 750 employees from AIGSS -- the software captive of insurance firm AIG that it acquired. About 300 of the 750-employees of the captive were on the bench, and MphasiS has now deployed them on client projects.
While larger tech rivals hire employees and keep them on bench in preparedness for new projects, MphasiS has a just-in-time hiring policy. “Our hiring engine is highly tweaked. We don’t carry a huge bench,” said Elango. The company had an 82% utilisation in the October 2009 quarter.
The current crop of employees are also being hired in response to deals the company has won, and will work in the areas of enterprise resource planning (ERP), web technologies, infrastructure management and applications.
The company has also taken on board 120 freshers that it had made offers to and intends to shortly ask 150 more freshers to join. With this, all the freshers with outstanding offers from the company and who haven’t dropped out, would have joined, Mr Elango said.
The bonus, termed as a recompense bonus, was introduced earlier this year, replacing increments, and is likely to be extended over next few years, said a senior company official.
“We have started innovating on the compensation model. We will not do salary increases... If the company is doing well, the employees will be compensated for it,” Elango R, chief human resources officer, MphasiS, said.
Unlike some top IT firms, which already have a variable pay structure in place, MphasiS had a predominantly fixed salary structure till 2009. By shifting to a one-time bonus, which is linked the employee’s performance and the company’s performance, MphasiS aims to make about 20% of its employee wage bill variable in the next three years.
In 2009, the demand slump and the need to conserve cash forced the management to reach out to employees, and ask them to forgo salary hikes, customarily given in March or April. Elango said the company didn’t do any layoffs or salary cuts, and employees were promised they would be compensated when the company performed well. True to promise, MphasiS recently gave a recompense bonus of 10% and higher than that will be paid out in December.
MphasiS, which announced results for its fiscal ended October 2009 last week, posted a sharp 44% rise in revenue to Rs 4,283.3 crore and a two-fold jump in net profit to Rs 908 crore. The company also intends to resume hiring and will hire as many as 1,500 experienced professionals to fill open positions in the current quarter alone.
In the October 2009 quarter, it had opted not to hire, as it had to absorb around 750 employees from AIGSS -- the software captive of insurance firm AIG that it acquired. About 300 of the 750-employees of the captive were on the bench, and MphasiS has now deployed them on client projects.
While larger tech rivals hire employees and keep them on bench in preparedness for new projects, MphasiS has a just-in-time hiring policy. “Our hiring engine is highly tweaked. We don’t carry a huge bench,” said Elango. The company had an 82% utilisation in the October 2009 quarter.
The current crop of employees are also being hired in response to deals the company has won, and will work in the areas of enterprise resource planning (ERP), web technologies, infrastructure management and applications.
The company has also taken on board 120 freshers that it had made offers to and intends to shortly ask 150 more freshers to join. With this, all the freshers with outstanding offers from the company and who haven’t dropped out, would have joined, Mr Elango said.
new openings, Wipro
Wipro to hire 5,000 in 2 months
IT firm Wipro Technologies said it will hire 5,000 people in the next couple of months and is looking at a fresh recruitment strategy of taking in graduates from non-engineering institutes.
"Our strategy is to recruit non-engineering graduates, in addition to engineering and make them fit into the slot. We are still working out the details," Wipro Technologies Joint Chief Executive Officer Girish Paranjpe today said.
Refusing to divulge more details for next year's recruitments and outlook, Paranjpe said it would be a mix of 60 per cent freshers and 40 per cent experienced.
Around 5,000 will be taken into the company in a month or two, he said.
Last year, the company made offers to as many as 8,500 persons through recruitment drives in colleges and institutions.
"We expect clients to make no further cuts in their budgets. We expect 2010 to be a better year than 2009," Paranjpe said.
He said the new hiring strategies will be worked out in a month or two. Attrition rate in the company stood at 10 per cent. On becoming energy efficient, he said the company is determined to reduce the carbon emission per employee by 45 per cent from the present 3.96 tonnes to 2.5 tonnes in the next five years.
"Our power consumption went down by 12 per cent last year and we are planning to set up a micro windmill at our Hyderabad facility soon," Paranjpe said.
The company consumes nearly 75 megawatt power from both government and internal sources. He said the company's exposure in the Gulf market is around 4 per cent and the Dubai financial crisis will have no impact.
"Our strategy is to recruit non-engineering graduates, in addition to engineering and make them fit into the slot. We are still working out the details," Wipro Technologies Joint Chief Executive Officer Girish Paranjpe today said.
Refusing to divulge more details for next year's recruitments and outlook, Paranjpe said it would be a mix of 60 per cent freshers and 40 per cent experienced.
Around 5,000 will be taken into the company in a month or two, he said.
Last year, the company made offers to as many as 8,500 persons through recruitment drives in colleges and institutions.
"We expect clients to make no further cuts in their budgets. We expect 2010 to be a better year than 2009," Paranjpe said.
He said the new hiring strategies will be worked out in a month or two. Attrition rate in the company stood at 10 per cent. On becoming energy efficient, he said the company is determined to reduce the carbon emission per employee by 45 per cent from the present 3.96 tonnes to 2.5 tonnes in the next five years.
"Our power consumption went down by 12 per cent last year and we are planning to set up a micro windmill at our Hyderabad facility soon," Paranjpe said.
The company consumes nearly 75 megawatt power from both government and internal sources. He said the company's exposure in the Gulf market is around 4 per cent and the Dubai financial crisis will have no impact.
H1-B, Infosys, NRIs
Infosys to double US headcount
Indian IT majors seem to be in a hurry to shed their `job stealer' tag. Country's IT bellwether is all set to double its workforce in the US.
According to a news report in Walls Street Journal (WSJ), India's second-largest software exporter by revenue is planning to hire 1,000 employees in the US. The report quotes a recent interview of the company's Chief Executive S Gopalkrishnan to Dow Jones Newswires.
The news comes close on the heels of TCS CEO saying that the company wants to become global not just in terms of "sales but from a people perspective". The country's numero uno IT company recently expanded its strategic business alliance with US-based Dow Chemicals. The alliance will create new jobs in Midland-Michigan.
As part of the alliance, Dow and TCS are planning to build a new service centre at a site near Dow's global headquarters in Midland Michigan, the US.
Recently the country's third largest IT company Wipro Technologies too announced that it is expanding its US operations and will hire about 1,000 people, including more locals.
Indian IT companies, who have traditionally been earning over 50% of their profits from the US markets, are often derided for stealing local jobs. The recent recession and spiralling unemployment in the US seems has only further fueled the sentiment.
According to a news report in Walls Street Journal (WSJ), India's second-largest software exporter by revenue is planning to hire 1,000 employees in the US. The report quotes a recent interview of the company's Chief Executive S Gopalkrishnan to Dow Jones Newswires.
The news comes close on the heels of TCS CEO saying that the company wants to become global not just in terms of "sales but from a people perspective". The country's numero uno IT company recently expanded its strategic business alliance with US-based Dow Chemicals. The alliance will create new jobs in Midland-Michigan.
As part of the alliance, Dow and TCS are planning to build a new service centre at a site near Dow's global headquarters in Midland Michigan, the US.
Recently the country's third largest IT company Wipro Technologies too announced that it is expanding its US operations and will hire about 1,000 people, including more locals.
Indian IT companies, who have traditionally been earning over 50% of their profits from the US markets, are often derided for stealing local jobs. The recent recession and spiralling unemployment in the US seems has only further fueled the sentiment.
Layoffs in USA, Recession
ST-Ericsson to lay off 600 staff globally
Chip maker ST-Ericsson has said that it plans to cut around 600 jobs worldwide as part of a move to save $115 million annually.
The joint venture between Swedish wireless equipment firm LM Ericsson AB and Swiss chipmaker STMicroelectronics said that it will conduct a global work force review. It will announce further details of the layoffs, and which countries will be affected after it has been in contact with the related unions.
The savings will add to a previous savings program announced in July. To reach the annual savings target ST-Ericsson will also reduce operating expenses and introduce an efficiency program within its research and development operations. ST-Ericsson was formed as a joint venture between Ericsson and STMicroelectronics in February 2009 with main headquarters in Geneva.
The joint venture between Swedish wireless equipment firm LM Ericsson AB and Swiss chipmaker STMicroelectronics said that it will conduct a global work force review. It will announce further details of the layoffs, and which countries will be affected after it has been in contact with the related unions.
The savings will add to a previous savings program announced in July. To reach the annual savings target ST-Ericsson will also reduce operating expenses and introduce an efficiency program within its research and development operations. ST-Ericsson was formed as a joint venture between Ericsson and STMicroelectronics in February 2009 with main headquarters in Geneva.
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