Chennai Information Technology Sector

[karkal]

Kryptos Networks - The New-Age Distributor
o Radhika Nallayam
26.11.2012 kl 22:30 | Channelworld India

Enterprise customers want a pay-per-use model. But so do the good people offering that flexibility. That's where Kryptos Networks comes in.

When ChannelWorld first interviewed Prasanna (he only goes by one name, like Usher, minus the bad attitude), it was easy to think the CEO of Chennai-based Kryptos Networks was off his rocker. It was 2007 and the cloud with its pay-for-use culture hadn't quite broken out on the scene. IT investments were paid for upfront, just like they had been for years. Capex was king of the IT spending block and few questioned its authority.

But Prasanna had already begun to poke at the status quo. "We identified the growth potential of the pay-as-you-go business model and how new concepts like cloud computing and remote management would revolutionize the industry. We realized that as connectivity improved, a lot of service providers would actively push their hosted offerings and we saw a huge potential as an SPLA (services provider license agreement) based business," says Prasanna.

Fast forward five-years: Kryptos has partnerships with more than 300 hosting companies in the country, who primarily offer cloud services to enterprise-class customers. Using the SPLA model, service providers and independent software vendors can license software from vendors so that they can provide software services and hosted applications to their customers. Kryptos, like a new-age cloud distributor, sits in between the vendor and

service providers.

Kryptos works with vendors like VMware, Citrix, Microsoft, and Parallels to procure software licenses for hosting companies, who in turn use these licenses to offer services to end customers on a pay-per-use basis. It's a model that works for everyone: Vendors get their software to new markets without having to build and manage hundreds of relationships, and service providers get to use software on a pay-per-use basis, creating better cash flow and less dead inventory.

"In our service provider program, the license ownership is never transferred from the principals or OEMs. Only the 'right to use' is shared. The advantage for service providers is that they pay only for how much they can sell. With a traditional model, irrespective of whether service providers make money or not, they are required to invest in the software. With service provider program, providers install the license and start paying a vendor only when they add customers. Only a service provider's success will bring me revenue," explains Prasanna.

Beyond Basic Distribution

Kryptos does more than just act like a bridge between vendors and an archipelago of service providers. Unlike a traditional distributor whose primary aim is to act as an intermediary, Kryptos brings a lot of value to the table. Prasanna believes that unless licenses are built into services, they will have no value. Hence, Kryptos works closely with its service provider partners to help build their subscription-based business.

"We work with them on different business cases, and help them package services to end customers. We also help them in architecting a solution, and even with implementation if they do not have the required skills. If the hosters also want us to manage the solution, we do that for them, on a pay-as-you-go model. We charge them based on the number of customers they acquire," says Prasanna.

All of this means that Kryptos is expected to have tremendous technical know-how across various layers of the infrastructure, including hardware and applications. So it's no surprise that 40 of Kryptos' 60 employees form its technical team.

There's a market for the model Kryptos pushes if its revenues are any indication. In just two years, Kryptos has almost tripled its revenue and has also grown the number of service provider partnerships it has. Today, it's partner list includes all the major datacenter hosting companies, telcos, and cloud service providers in India. Some of these partners include key names like Net4, Sify, Ramco Systems, and Netmagic Solutions, HCL, TCL, CtrlS among others.

Branching Out

Kryptos also extended this model to include systems integrator as well. Kryptos partners with systems integrators and help them connect with its service provider partners to jointly offer cloud-based solutions to end users.

While the service provider community contributes the major share of its business (it drives 90 percent of the company's revenues), it also sees an opportunity in partnering with ISVs and lately with a few major SIs as well. Kryptos connects ISVs with its service provider partners to build various applications for end customers. The two partners then jointly take the cloud solutions to the market. This ensures more feet on the street for Kryptos, and also access to newer markets that are typically not addressed by huge cloud hosting companies. Besides, the ISV partnerships make the application story quite compelling for the end users.

On the SI side, the story is more exciting. While the service provider business is expected to flourish further, Kryptos is bullish about its new SI partnerships. Most vendors, says Prasanna, do see an opportunity in reaching out to new markets through the SIs. Currently, Kryptos has partnered with about 20 SIs and the aim is to reach out to at least 100 SIs within the next six months. What makes these partnerships exciting is that Kryptos provides its SI partners with an option to white label these services and sell it to their customers under their own brand.

Apart from the major virtualization vendors, Kryptos has strong associations with brands like VMUnify, Veeam, CloudByte and StopTheHacker.com. And while software is the major focus for Kryptos currently, it has plans to venture into a similar model for hardware in the near future.

As the industry moves towards subscription-based models, more and more players in the ecosystem of service providers, SIs and vendors, will benefit. That's money for Kryptos.

[karkal]

An app by Indians(Chennai) is No. 1 grosser on the Apple iPad

Magzter, an online magazine store developed by two Chennai-based entrepreneurs Girish Ramdas and Vijayakumar Radhakrishnan, has become the top grosser on the Apple iPad.

Since last Thursday, Magzter has overtaken international favourites and long standing grossers like Angry Birds, NY Times for iPad, Clash of Clans and Frontline Commando. On Tuesday, Clash of Clans had briefly recovered its No. 1 spot, but when TOI last looked at the list of top grossers on the iPad, Magzter was back at the top. The iPad has over 700,000 apps.

"Even in the number of daily downloads, Magzter has crossed other reading apps like Flipboard, Pulse and Zite," Ramdas, CEO of Magzter, said. It has 4.5 million users globally, many of them in the US, the market that the company is most focused on.

Magzter has more than 1,500 magazines in its store. About 400 of them are Indian magazines. "We have readers from all over the world who buy magazine subscriptions every day. Cross border selling is helping the digital magazine industry by generating more global readers," Radhakrishnan, president of Magzter said.

The app was launched 17 months ago, but received massive traction over the past 45 days thanks to some Facebook sharing features that were added to the app. "Now, if you like the cover of a magazine, you can share it on Facebook, and if your friends like it, they can click to come to our store to buy it. This has had a major viral effect," Ramdas said.

Magzter's popularity is also because of the ease with which publishers can use it to publish replica versions of the magazine or even to create highly interactive magazines. "We give complete control to publishers and they get to decide what they want to give to their readers," Radhakrishnan said. Magazine prices are also heavily discounted, by as much as 50% in many cases, which also adds to Magzter's allure.

Another big advantage of Magzter, compared to some of its other online newsstand competitors, is that you can buy a magazine on one platform, say Apple's iOS, and read it on another one of your devices that runs on the Android or Windows 8 platform.

Ramdas graduated from the College of Engineering, Guindy, in Chennai. He ran an IT services company in Chennai called Dot Com Infoway and then started a magazine called Galatta Media focused on south Indian films. He later created an iPhone and iPad app for the magazine, which gave him the idea to create a global online magazine newsstand.

[ThoughtomatioN]

Originally Posted by karkal

An app by Indians(Chennai) is No. 1 grosser on the Apple iPad

Click here for your magazines

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Vijay explains that Magzter works on the cloud system that identifies and delivers content based on the fact that the user has registered with it.

“You have registered with us, we know who you are, and what you have bought.” It will be expensive for a publisher to develop apps for the different devices, and that is what Magzter’s selling point is.

All that a publisher has to do is to provide the magazine in PDF files, and they will be digitally available on any platform.

Magzter now has about 1,000 magazines, some paid for and some free, from India, the Philippines, Indonesia, Singapore, the US, the UK, Malaysia and West Asia.

Magzter has four million users, a fifth of them in India, 15 per cent each in the US and the UK and the rest spread across.

Vijay reckons 10-20 per cent of Magzter’s users will buy magazines from it.

“One of our objectives is to increase this percentage by giving them more content,” says Vijay.

How does Magzter gets its revenue? It shares revenue with the publisher, says Girish. It is like any brick-and-mortar book store, he explains. Magzter gets half the revenues on each magazine bought.

“We are very much like a physical store. We did the investment, we have the footfalls, we do all the marketing, you keep your magazine in our store,” he says.

Revenues, according to him, are growing 10-15 per cent every month, without disclosing details. The company hopes to be profitable by next year. The company is using up cash as it expands its marketing overseas and tries to bring in publishers in Brazil, Russia, Japan and other countries.

Magzter is available in 14 languages, including Spanish, Portuguese and Korean. The technology can support 100 million users and 25,000 magazines.
‘Orey’ click publishing

Lending a local touch to their business, Girish and Vijay are trying to patent what they call orey click publishing — or one click publishing — orey being the Tamil equivalent for one.

That is, a publisher needs to click only once to upload the magazine.

It will be available on all the different platforms. Magzter also has something similar for its users — single sign-in.

Would Magzter not be an ideal target for a large global distributor of magazines? “One of the people who wanted to buy us out was Hudson News. They are the largest distributors in the world,” says Girish.

“They were in talks with us to invest and with a potential buyback option. But then we had bigger ideas than getting bought,” he adds.

If the valuation is right, everything today has a price, he muses. “I think it is a great business to be in.

It is like a Wal-Mart of magazines,” says Girish.

[karkal]

[karkal]

Sundaram Infotech Signs Expanded IT deal with Aussie Online Event Management Firm

As part of its expansion in the Australian IT Services market, Chennai based Sundaram Infotech Solutions Ltd., the IT subsidiary of Sundaram Finance Ltd., has announced that the company has signed an expanded IT deal with Easybookings, a Victoria, Australia headquartered online ticketing and event management firm.

As part of the new expanded IT deal, Sundaram Infotech will build for Easybookings a robust online auctioning and shopping platform, develop a new mobile apps for the company and also build a mini site, a concept that is catching up in Australia. The new platform that Sundaram Infotech will build will also help Easybookings launch its offering in the New Zealand market.

Sundaram Infotech had earlier signed an initial deal to build an online ticketing engine for Easybookings.com.au. Sundaram Infotech's technical Expertise in building the architecture to deliver an online platform for worldwide growth for Easybookings has helped the customer save hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Commenting on the choice of Sundaram Infotech, John Pereira, Managing Director, EasyBookings said, "We scouted both within Australia and overseas for the right partner for this engagement to build the online platform for EasyBookings. We chose India based Sundaram Infotech for their deep domain technical expertise and for having the right mix of onshore presence and the offshore capability."

The new online platform at Easybookings providing solution for schools and sporting organizations that have events round the year has helped take the stress out of designing and printing tickets, inviting guests, generating and managing guest list as well as the entire seating arrangement processes.

On the new expanded IT deal, John Pereira said, "Within three months of the launch of the online platform built by Sundaram Infotech, Easybooking.com.au has attracted and managed over 150 customer events online. This has given us the confidence to embark on an expanded IT engagement with Sundaram Infotech."

On the success in Australia, Srinivas Acharya, Director, Sundaram Infotech said, "The visible results achieved by our client in terms of gaining customer traction within months of rolling out their services on the online platform developed by us, is a strong testimony to our team's capabilities and domain expertise in this space and augurs well for future expansion in Australia."

Commenting on its expansion in Australia, Deepa Ramesh, Head, Sundaram Infotech said, "Australia has traditionally been a strong overseas market for Sundaram Infotech with over 10customers. This deal with Easybookings strengthens further our presence in the Australian IT Services market. We will continue to aggressively target the Australian IT Services market and are confident of expanding our customer base there over the next 12months."

[chennaidesi]

I wonder why these people entered IT(sundaram finance) very late.

[murlee]

New SolarWinds office in Chennai, India (SP Infocity)



image hosted on flickr


Src: All rights reserved by SolarWinds_SWI

[ranga]

IT industry may miss Nasscom’s 11-14% growth forecast
Slowdown in key markets such as the US and Europe could mean that information technology services firms may not meet the projected 11-14 per cent growth this year. While industry body Nasscom insists that its growth forecast will be achieved, many IT honchos say that will be a tough call.

Economic situation
“I don’t think the Nasscom's growth projection will be met this year because of the economic situation beginning this year. I think it will be in high-single digit,” Sandeep Aurora, Director (Marketing and Sales, South Asia) of Intel, said.

Market watchers say Infosys, which caused a flutter early this year with poor earnings numbers, could well still be the bellwether for the impending slowdown could upset the IT applecart.

“Very unlikely we will achieve the lower end of the projections when the situation is so uncertain,” said R. V. Ramanan, Executive Director and President (Global Delivery), Hexaware Technologies.

While the big IT firms including TCS, HCL, Cognizant and Mahindra Satyam could still outpace the Nasscom estimated growth levels, overall, the industry is expected to grow at a rate lower than that projected by Nasscom.

“Given the lack of major orders, the industry will only be able to grow 10-11 per cent,” A. K. Prabhakar, Senior Vice-President (Equity Research), Anand Rathi, said.

In a recent interaction with Business Line, Phaneesh Murthy, President and Chief Executive Officer of iGATE, had said the market was still uncertain. “I think the industry will grow at single-digit rate this year and not as projected by Nasscom,” he said. On the other hand, B.V.R. Mohan Reddy, Executive Council member of Nasscom and Infotech Managing Director, feels that 11 per cent growth is achievable. This is echoed by Datamatics Chairman Lalit S. Kanodia as well.

Analysts said that despite lower growth, the Indian IT industry is better off than most other markets.

Still a positive
Sid Pai, partner in research and consulting firm Information Services Group, said that since the overall growth in the worldwide outsourcing industry is in single digit, even a low double-digit growth performance by the Indian industry will be a positive.

Harish HV, Partner at Grant Thornton, said that while tough macroeconomic conditions could make the Nasscom projections difficult to achieve, Indian IT firms may still scrape through if the situation in Europe improves
http://www.thehindubusinessline.com/...?homepage=true

[Ramki830]

Reg IT Slowdown - One issue that is not reported is, there is large bench strength in most of the currently profitable, well doing IT Companies as well. This has come out of the aggressive recruitment that has been done over couple of years. Now a lot of relook is being done on this aspect and naturally businesses want to improve operating profitability and resource utilization.

Having said that the profitability of IT companies has only gone up in last 18 months, despite slowdown, simply because of the windfall due to steep rupee devaluation (20% since 2010).

[karkal]

Ramco ERP to serve ADC Energy via cloud

Chennai, Dec. 3:

Chennai-based Ramco Systems will provide its full ERP suite to ADC Energy Systems, Dubai.

Ramco Systems has announced on the NSE that the deal with ADC Energy for ERP on cloud will provide the latter full-suite ERP including finance, project management, real estate, inventory, procurement and subcontracting, sales and CRM, and HCM and payroll.

There will be specific focus on the engineering, procurement and construction vertical. Ramco ERP will interface with MS SharePoint and Primavera.

Ramco Systems will address the requirement of ADC Energy across the UAE, Saudi Arabia and Qatar.

The Dubai-based company is a provider of engineering and construction solutions for industrial and commercial cooling, heating and energy systems.

The ERP suite will enable ADC Energy track and monitor projects, resources, inventory and financials and comply with changing regulatory requirements.

ADC Energy is also focussing on grain milling and the food business sector, and is set to handle large grain storage terminals. It is also engaged in cement and mineral and mining applications.

Ramco Systems provides enterprise solutions on cloud, mobile and tablets.

[karkal]

CCI gives approval for restructuring of two TCS entities

The Competition Commission has approved the restructuring of the two subsidiaries of country's largest software exporter Tata Consultancy Services. The restructuring pertains to two entities -- e-Serve and TEIL.

The Competition Commission has approved the restructuring of the two subsidiaries of country's largest software exporter Tata Consultancy Services. The restructuring pertains to two entities -- e-Serve and TEIL.


Also read: TCS wins multi-million, multi-year contract from UK Home office

"It is observed that the proposed combination is a group restructuring exercise and the ultimate control over the activities of e-Serve and TEIL would continue to be exercised by TCS, both prior to as well as pursuant to the proposed combination," the Commission said in order dated November 22.

The proposed combination is, therefore, not likely to have any adverse competitive effect in India, the Commission said. TCS, e-Serve and TEIL are into the business of providing IT, ITeS and Business Process Outsourcing services. The combination process would consist of two parts -- amalgamation of e-Serve into TCS and the demerger of the Special Economic Zone (SEZ) undertaking of TEIL into TCS.

TEIL is a wholly-owned subsidiary of TCS. TCS holds 96.26 per cent stake in TEIL through e-Serve. The Commission said TEIL SEZ includes the business of TEIL -- that primarily is providing information technology and information technology-enabled services carried out at SEZ locations in Chennai, Kolkata and Gurgaon.

TCS along with TCS e-Serve Ltd and TCS e-Serve International Ltd had jointly filed an application seeking approval on November 12. The notice was submitted following a composite scheme of amalgamation after being cleared by their respective boards on October 19.

[karkal]

Aakash 3 is being developed at IIT Madras & it will be ‘remarkably different’

Kaustubh Katdare Dec 1st, 2012 1 Comment

Aakash tablets have been rocking the Indian tech news scene for several weeks for plenty of reasons ranging from issues between companies who’ve won the contracts, to the quality of the tablets, to the most recent update that questioned whether Aakash tablet is ‘Made in India’ or ‘Made in China’. But that won’t halt the development of Aakash and according to latest update in the social media, Aakash 3 is being developed by Prof. Ashok Jhunjhunwala, professor of electrical engineering at IIT Madras. Prof. Jhunjhunwala says that the Aakash 3 (A-3) will be ‘remarkably different’ from the previous versions of Aakash.

Aakash 3 Tablet Aakash III

The next version will have a larger distribution and servicing system accompanying it because the makers expect the volume of the orders to be much bigger. There will be more accountability and nationwide repair centers so that the owners don’t have to send the tablets back to the company for repairs and can get them done locally.

Aakash will aim at bringing a revolution in Indian education system and that’s why Aakash – 2 won’t be sold in markets. Instead, the devices will be distributed among 20,000 engineering students across India so that they can build India specific applications for the tablet. Deepak Parekh, Head of IIT Bombay’s Kanwal Rekhi School of Information Technology is piloting a project with 20k engineering students and over 11k professors & lecturers.

We don’t have information on the hardware and software specifications of Aakash 3 yet. But the tablet is expected to make an entry in the markets in the ‘next few months’ as the ecosystem it requires gets ready.

[karkal]

Apollo sells BPO to Sutherland of US for Rs 1,000 cr

US-headquartered Sutherland Global Services has signed a definitive agreement to acquire 100 per cent of Apollo Health Street (AHS), an associate company of Apollo Hospitals Enterprises. The transaction that is said to be worth about Rs 1,000 crore is an all-cash deal and is expected to be closed by February 2013, subject to necessary regulatory approvals.

Apollo Hospitals Enterprises provides end-to-end medical outsourcing services including revenue cycle management of hospitals, professional services and patient claims management services catering to US-based doctor groups, hospitals and insurers. The BPO has offices in Chennai, Hyderabad and New York. For financial year 2012, the company’s revenue increased to Rs 490.90 crore from Rs 447.60 crore the previous year.

As of March 31, Apollo Hospitals held about 1.1 crore equity shares of the BPO amounting to about Rs 123 crore (38.69 per cent of the total equity of the company). Apollo Hospitals further owns 0.69 per cent through its wholly-owned subsidiary Unique Home Health Care.

Maxwell Mauritius and One Equity Partners own the remaining stakes in AHS. In 2005, the two companies that are part of Temasek and JP Morgan Chase, respectively, invested about $7.5 million in the healthcare BPO.

Sutherland’s acquisition of AHS would position the combined organisation as a leading healthcare service provider.

This would provide the firm comprehensive information technology and business process integrated solutions to consolidate its presence as a dominant player in the $38-billion US healthcare BPO market, said Dilip Vellodi, founder chairman and CEO of Sutherland Global Services.

“With this acquisition, Sutherland addresses the central challenge facing major north American and European healthcare providers and payers (hospitals and insurance companies) -- to provide service to patients in a cost effective manner. Apollo’s expertise, combined with our proven capabilities, strengthens our portfolio of payer, provider and health IT solutions in driving value to our client base,” he added.

Established in 1986, Sutherland is one of the largest independent BPO companies with over 30,000 employees globally working out of 35 operations centers in India, the US, Philippines, India, UAE, Egypt, Bulgaria, the UK, Canada, Jamaica, Mexico, and Colombia.

[murlee]

F5 Networks Opens RMA Depots In Delhi, Chennai

[karkal]

Technology investors betting big on cloud computing startups on hope of strong returns

Technology investors are raising the tempo of investments in cloud computing startups buoyed by strong returns and growing customer demand for software as a service.

This week, venture funds closed two more deals in the sector with Norwest Venture Partners putting in $6 million (about Rs 32.6 crore) in first-round funding for Attune Technologies. The Chennai-based startup uses cloud technology for scheduling, billing and management of patient data with a base of 2 million patient records.

Angel investment network Mumbai Angels has made a seed investment of under Rs 5 crore in Pune-based startup MaxiMojo, which provides cloud-based distribution and revenue management solutions for hotels.

"Savvy investors are racing to get ahead of the next wave and pick up great opportunities in the cloud and enterprise software space before valuations rise and competition for deals heats up," says Ravi Gururaj, vice-president for cloud platforms group at Citrix Systems, a global technology firm. His startup venture, VMLogix, was acquired by Citrix in 2010.

The attractiveness of cloud-based applications across sectors from hospitality to healthcare is driven by ease of use and lower cost. The startups offer products where information is stored and processed on computers 'in the cloud', or the web, instead of local servers. This data can then be remotely accessed through a personal computer, cellphone or any other device, with users typically paying for the service when they use it.

"I can push a few buttons on my phone and access files from my office server remotely from anywhere," says Sahil Parikh, founder of Synage Software.
Technology investors betting big on cloud computing startups on hope of strong returns



LARGE IT COS CLOUDI-FYING APPLICATIONS

In India, the cloud market is estimated to grow over 10-fold to $4.5 billion by 2015, from $400 million now, according to a report by technology firm EMC and consulting firm Zinnov. Industry experts feel this is leading to a surge of new startups that offer niche services to large enterprises which earlier required huge budgets to automate operations.

"Large IT companies in India are cloudi-fying their applications, instead of deploying core banking application based on traditional licences-based model, they are offering cloud-based applications as a service to customers," says Nitin Khanapurkar, partner, management consulting for information technology and services, at auditing firm KPMG.

Entrepreneurs quick to spot this growing opportunity have responded with a slew of new ventures. One such is Chennai-based OrangeScape, which provides cloud solutions to firms like drugmaker AstraZenecaBSE -1.73 %, consumer-goods company UnileverBSE -2.65 % and automaker Ford.

It has raised $1 million from the Indian Angel Network. These startups, which need little capital, are growing faster and are more profitable compared to traditional enterprise technology ventures. "Cloud computing startups are being valued at around 5-8 times their revenues as the technology requires less manpower and needs a smaller amount of capital to set up," says Parikh.

[karkal]

Next Wave to add 50 IP games

Next Wave Multimedia, a Chennai-based provider of digital media, technology, communication and entertainment solutions to OEMs (original equipment manufacturers) like BlackBerry and Nokia, is planning to add 50 more casual online games to its current portfolio of 100 IP (intellectual property) games in the next one year.

Speaking to Business Standard at the ongoing 'AppFest' in Hyderabad on Thursday, PR Rajendran, director, Next Wave, said each of the proposed games, across genres, would entail an investment of between Rs 5 lakh and Rs 10 lakh.

“These games will help us in ad-monetisation. We also plan to develop 1-2 bigger multi-player games, each with an investment of between Rs 15 lakh and Rs 1 crore, every year, starting this year,” he said.

The 10-year-old, privately-held company, which transformed itself from IT services to being a products development firm over the years, has seen close to 46 million downloads on its portal in the last two years, and expects this to touch 50 million by the end of this month.

Rajendran said the company was also focusing on self-publishing tools (SPTs), and had recently launched the mobile and tablet version of its first comic SPT.

[karkal]

New Findings from University of Madras in the Area of Nanoparticles Published

Nanoparticles NewsRx.com

By a News Reporter-Staff News Editor at Science Letter -- Current study results on Nanoparticles have been published. According to news reporting out of Tamil Nadu, India, by NewsRx editors, research stated, "Two types of bead-shaped stable heterogeneous nanoparticle catalysts, viz, polymer-supported poly(styrene) functionalized with poly(vinylimidazole) immobilized silver nanoparticles (PS-PVIm-AgNPs) were prepared from poly(styrene)-co-poly(N-vinylimidazole) polymer matrices derived from 2% (Type-I) and 10% (Type-II) cross-linking monomer divinylbenzene and AgNO3 as a metal precursor. The appearance of surface plasmon resonance peak at 422 nm in UV and Ag-N-(str,N-ring) peaks noticed at 1664 cm(-1) for Type-I and 1668 cm(-1) for Type-II catalysts in FT-IR confirms the immobilization of AgNPs onto PS-PVIm."

Our news journalists obtained a quote from the research from the University of Madras, "The SEM and EDAX results prove that the Type-I catalyst has heterogeneous morphology with more white patches and enhanced amount of surface nitrogen and AgNPs than Type-II. The size of the AgNPs on Type-I and Type-II catalysts was measured as 10 nm and 14.6 nm from XRD, respectively. The comparative catalytic study for the reduction of 4-nitrophenol reveals that the pseudo-first order rate constant (k(obs)) for Type-I catalyst was relatively superior (k(obs) = 5.12 x 10(-4)) than Type-II (k(obs)=1.20 x 10(-4)) due to the addition of high cross-linking load in Type-II. For the same reaction with Type-I catalyst, the variation of [substrate], [catalyst] and [NaBH4] was directly proportional to k(obs)."

According to the news editors, the research concluded: "The stability and reusability of the catalyst were observed good and sustained even at six cycles."

For more information on this research see: Synthesis and characterization of silver nanoparticles supported on surface-modified poly(N-vinylimidazale) as catalysts for the reduction of 4-nitrophenol. Journal of Molecular Catalysis A-Chemical, 2012;365():128-135. Journal of Molecular Catalysis A-Chemical can be contacted at: Elsevier Science Bv, PO Box 211, 1000 Ae Amsterdam, Netherlands (see also Nanoparticles).

Our news journalists report that additional information may be obtained by contacting E. Murugan, University of Madras, Dept. of Phys Chem, Sch Chem Sci, Madras 600025, Tamil Nadu, India.

Keywords for this news article include: Asia, India, Tamil Nadu, Nitrophenols, Nanotechnology, Nitro Compounds, Emerging Technologies

Our reports deliver fact-based news of research and discoveries from around the world. Copyright 2012, NewsRx LLC

[karkal]

TCS & Cognizant well poised: BofA-ML

Based on feedback from major IT companies, Bank of America Merrill Lynch is optimistic that 2013 could see a pick up in transformation related IT services spend. The sentiment on business outlook in 2013 for IT is better than last year, states the report.

Within the IT sector, BoA-ML feels that InfosysBSE -0.74 % is likely to miss its guidance for the current financial year. The bank also sees a downside risk to its estimates for Infosys.

However, BofA-ML feels that the IT major's strategy to move up the value chain and to re-engineer costs to improve competitiveness in the more commoditized outsourcing business is right. "There is also concerted effort on execution," the report says.

Tata Consultancy ServicesBSE -0.16 % (TCS) remains ahead of its peers on its investments in new markets and innovation, the report states. The bank also continues to view Cognizant as well positioned given its investment in client relationship management and new services in maturing IT services industry.

IT budgets
Both TCSBSE -0.16 % and Cognizant are cautiously optimistic about 2013 budgets. TCS's CFO TV Mahalingam is reasonably optimistic and has said that transformation is a key area of focus for CEOs. On the issue of manufacturing, TCS' CFO Mahalingam said the company's manufacturing vertical has a good pipeline of future projects. He also appeared optimistic on the financial services vertical.

While Mahalingam expects usual seasonal weakness in the December quarter due to the year-end shutdowns or furloughs, especially at manufacturing plants, he has not cited more than expected furloughs.

On the other hand, Cognizant's North America clients are forecasting flat IT budgets in 2013, similar with prior years, with offshore likely to gain. In BofA-ML's view, Cognizant was ahead of the curve in working to grow its consulting practice as others now seek to replicate it.

Hiring
Given lower attrition and uncertainty in the market environment, IT companies have become more cautious with on-campus hiring of fresh engineering graduates. While the campus placement process is still on, hiring is lower than last year. According to the report, companies are treading cautiously post last years' experience when the industry had over hired.

The report also cited outlook of the major IT services firms. Here is a look at how they are expected to fare across verticals in 2013:

Tata Consultancy Services
Given modest increases in utilization and an improving onsite/offshore mix, TCS hopes to achieve its aspiration of holding EBIT margins at 27% level. TCS is also investing in developing IP to help improve automation in delivery.

Infosys
Given lower revenues, the stiff margin target set for the second half appears to be at risk. However the bank has maintained its 'Buy' rating on the fact that no let up in initiatives to transform revenue mix is seen. "Growth is clearly a top priority, and is the key to margins too," the report added.

Cognizant
The bank remains comfortable with its 17.2% YoY revenue growth forecast for the fourth qaurter. It acknowledged some concern about discretionary spend. According to Rajesh Balaji, Practice leader Manufacturing and Logistics, manufacturers typically spend 0.5-1.5% of revenue on IT.

Cognizant's manufacturing clients generate 70% of revenue outside of the US. Europe has been especially focused on cost takeout. The competitive landscape has changed over the last four to five years in Balaji's view.

[karkal]

Companies' clampdown on office space in 2012 results to 1 lakh fewer white-collar jobs

[chennaidesi]

Saint-Gobain to set up global R&D centre in Chennai

Chennai, Dec. 14:

Saint-Gobain, a €42-billion multinational manufacturer of glass and construction material, is to set up its seventh global R&D centre in Chennai.

The facility, which will generate over 200 high-end jobs, will be housed in the IITM Research Park. The company announced plans to expand the facility to 1.20 lakh square feet from the present 400,000 sq. ft.

Lease space
Saint-Gobain will lease about 120,000 sq. ft in the expanded facility, to be the anchor tenant in the second phase of the IITM Research Park expansion.

IITM Research Park set up by the Indian Institute of Technology Madras facilitates industry-academy collaboration by providing a common space to work together and also offering incubating space for entrepreneurs.

Saint-Gobain has worked with the institution over the years in a dozen research projects, and now, a concrete R&D tie-up brings the partners closer together, said Professor Bhaskar Ramamurthi, Director, IIT-M and Chairman of the IITM Research Park.

Didier Roux, Chief Technology Officer, Saint-Gobain Group, said the Group is strongly R&D focussed with nearly a third of its business generated from products developed less than five years previously. It spends over €450 million on R&D annually.

R&D presents a major career opportunity in the Group with skilled personnel evolving to take up larger responsibilities.

The Chennai facility will match its other R&D centres in Europe, Spain and China, he said.

Anand Tanikella, Managing Director, Saint-Gobain Research India, said the centre will start on a temporary facility and shift to the new place, which the IITM Research Park plans to complete by 2015.

Prof Ramamurthi said the first phase had come at a cost of Rs 110 crore in 2010 and has been fully leased out.


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