Top Ten IT Companies of India 2008-2009

1) Tata Consultancy Services : Tata group-owned Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) is the country's no. 1 IT company. During the year 2008-09, the company clocked Rs 25,894 crore in revenues.

Like all its peers the company too was hit by slowdown pangs. The turmoil in the BFSI sector in the US hurt the company which has a huge exposure to the segment. It also had to write off some dues of Lehman Brothers and was hit by the bankruptcy of auto major General Motors and telecom giant Nortel.

However, the company made impressible gains in other sectors like manufacturing, healthcare and engineering services to grow by 22% year on year. Geographically, the company continued its expansion in Latin America, setting up its third delivery centre in Mexico. On acquisitions front, the company bought Citibank's BPO unit for $505 million.

The company which got 8% of its revenues from the domestic segment expanded its focus beyond government. It provided backend connectivity to Rajathan Royal's team during IPL season 2.

2) Wipro : At no. 2 is Bangalore-based Wipro. The company beat its larger rivals TCS and Infosys to post a revenue growth of 41% (excluding BPO). The company recorded revenues of Rs 23,882 crore during the fiscal 2008-09 which saw its two divisions Wipro Technologies and Wipro Infotech synergies better for total outsourcing deals.

The company fought the likes of IBM and HP on the domestic turf to wrestle Aircel, Wnitech Wireless and ESIC deals. The company's Middles East operations grew by over 280%.

The restructuring at the top level was followed by the departure of several senior executives of the company. The company was also hit by the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers and General Motors. The news that it Wipro has been barred by World Bank also created a small flutter.

3) Infosys : The third biggest IT company in India is Infosys with 2008-09 revenues of Rs 20,392 crore. The company closed the year with a 31% growth, with Europe and the US contributing 90% of the total revenues.

The turmoil in the US economy hit the company which had little focus on the domestic market. Only 1% of the company's revenues came from the domestic market.

However, the recession in the US seems to have wisened the company who is now focusing aggressively on the domestic market. Bharti Airtel and SBI were two of its big wins in the domestic market during the year.

Geographically, the company also expanded in Central Europe, Latin America and South America. The company also opened a new development centre in Mexico.

Last quarter saw the company laying off almost 1500 people on the grounds of non-performance.

4) HP India : The fourth largest IT company is Hewlett Packard India. Slowdown seems to have hurt the company badly, which grew by mere 2% in the fiscal 2008-09.

However, the company's slow growth was not company wide. While TSG grew by a good 33%, largely led by services and enterprise software, the PSG and IPG divisions saw a big hit in their numbers due to the general hit in the consumer sentiment.

Parent company's acquisition of EDS helped solidify HP's services business in the Indian market, with 18% of the revenues coming from the domestic segment.

The company bagged several new clients including Indian Railways, Tata Motors, Durgapur Steel and Raymonds. HP India continued to be the no. 1 vendor in notebooks and desktops across all four quarters according to IDC.

5) IBM India : At no. 5 is IBM India. With revenues of Rs 12,048 crore, the company grew by a decent 36% during the fiscal 2008-09 (excluding BPO business). The FY ‘09 saw the share of domestic revenue in the overall pie increase to 48%, from the previous year's 42%.

The company's big wins included SAP implementation deals from Torrent Pharma and Star India. It also won some key deals from Bharti Retail, Bharat Bijlee, LANCO Infratech, Cavincare, HDFC Bank, Max NewYork Life and Sun Direct.

The company was hit by its aggressive focus on the retail and real estate segments, as the two sectors are among the worst hit sectors.

The company's image as a hire and fire employer too is said to be there due to the layoffs it announced early last year.

6) Cognizant Technology Services : The sixth largest IT company in India is Cognizant Technology Services. Surprisingly, the company which gets four-fifth of its revenues from the US and half of this from the BFSI sector grew by almost 49% during the fiscal year 2008-09. With this the company recorded highest growth among all IT companies in the country for the third year in a row.

At a time when almost all companies announced layoffs, Cognizant claimed to have added 10% to its workforce between April ‘08 to March ‘09.

Cognizant also increased its penetration in the non-US markets, growing by over 71% in Europe and 142% in APAC. The company also made some inroads into the German market. The year also marked Cognizant’s entry into the domestic market.

7) Ingram Micro : IT distributor Ingram Micro is the seventh biggest IT company in the country. The year saw slowdown straining the company's revenues. The worst hit was the company's non-IT business, which includes mobiles and consumer electronics.

Incidentally, the company witnessed healthy growth in the first half of fiscal 2008-09, however, the poor showing in the second half wiped out the gains of the first half.

Computing systems including, notebooks, servers and desktops continue to be the biggest revenue generator for the company. In the computing segment, Ingram got maximum revenue from HP products followed by Acer. Lenovo's declining fortunes continue to trouble Ingram.

While printers and other peripherals did show slowdown pangs, the company's component business did well showing impressive performance from Intel.

8) HCL Technologies : At no. 8 is HCL Technologies. The company grew by 41% to clock revenues of Rs 8,764 crore. The biggest highlight of the fiscal 2008-09 for the company was its acquisition of UK-based Axon for which it pipped rival Infosys technologies.

The $658 million Axon buy was the biggest acquisition in the history of Indian IT. The company said that the acquisition was the part of its Blue Ocean strategy, which aims to expand in high-potential areas with low competition.

The year saw the company expanding its footprint in the APAC market. Some big deals included, UTI, MTV Networks, Misys and Serena Software.

The company's two major clients were among the worst hit BFSI companies.

9) HCL Infosystems : The ninth largest Indian IT company is HCL Infosystems. With Rs 8,089 crore revenues, the company grew by almost 60% during the fiscal 2008-09 largely riding on its services business.

BFSI segment showed the most activity, with the company acquiring a cooperative banking software vendor NTPL. The company bagged orders from BSNL in the telecom space.

The company ventured into physical security space launching Safe State to offer security and surveillance solutions. Some big launches of the year include mobile POS solutions and high-speed Infiniti challenger series workstations.

However, the company's marketshare in the PC/laptop market continues to lag at a lowly 11-13%.

10) Redington India : The tenth largest IT company in India is Redington. Slowdown hit the company badly during the fiscal 2008-09, with growth slipping to 5% from 25% in the previous year.

The company's revenues during the year stood at Rs 6,576 crore. Peripheral and systems were the biggest spoilers for the company during the year, with both businesses shrinking.

On the positive side, the company added nine new vendors including some niche principals like Philips LCD and Belkin accessories. Focusing on large deals and guarding it cash reserves helped the company.

Premji re-appointed Wipro Chairman

MUMBAI: Software major Wipro said its current Chairman and Managing Director Azim Premji has been re-appointed for the post for a further two year period till July 2011. The shareholders of the company have given their approval for the re-appointment of Azim Premji as Chairman and Managing Director until July 30, 2011, Wipro said in a filing to the Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE).

His re-appointment would be effective from July 31, 2009, it further said.

Samsung launches world's first OMH phone

Leading CDMA player Samsung has announced the launch of the world's first OMH (Open Market Handset) phone "Mpower 699" in the Indian market in cooperation with Qualcomm that develops digital wireless communications products and services.

The OMH technology gives cellphone customers the flexibility to buy SIM cards for CDMA handsets from operators of their choice.

“This technology will help migration between operators in all our CMDA (Code Division Multiple Access) phones,” Samsung India country head Sunil Dutt said at the launch of the handset, priced at Rs 7,000.

He said Samsung's Mpower 699 is the world's first CDMA phone to offer this flexibility to customers since the network settings for CDMA connection have shifted from phone to OMH SIM card.

Qualcomm Inc's Senior Vice-President Kanwalinder Singh said that OMH handsets like Samsung's Mpower 699 play a central role in offering Indian subscribers the freedom and choice to easily change or upgrade their handsets.

"With currently more than 100 million CDMA subscribers, we expect OMH to play a key role in driving the growth of CDMA in India," Singh said.

Put Things Off: A Practical, Pragmatic Prioritizer for Procrastinators

Put Things Off is a to-do list app made for people who have come to terms with the fact that they can't always get everything done every day. It shows you a list of tasks you want to accomplish today, but if you decide any of them can wait for later, you don't have to go through the process of editing the date. With one button, they can be put off for anywhere from one to 31 days.

Procrastinators: The Leaders of Tomorrow

With a name like "Put Things Off," this app sounds like it was tailor-made for slackers and lazy people. Not so. Slackers and lazy people, by definition, lack motivation to plan for, organize and actually do things. Maybe it's a character flaw, or maybe it's a sort of Zen virtue, but it's not the kind of thing Put Things Off is made for.

Instead, Put Things Off is best for really busy people who need an easy way to manage tasks, figure out which ones need immediate attention, and put the rest on the back burner without abandoning them completely.

The app is laid out as a set of four wooden boxes like you'd find on an actual desk: Inbox, Today, Put Off and Done. Hit the "+" sign in the upper right corner to create a new task. You can either assign a specific due date, or save it in your Inbox with no date assigned. Giving it a due date of today saves it in your Today box, and any date in the future sends it over to you Put Off box. When the date changes at midnight, everything with a due date for today gets moved to the Today box.

So far, this sounds like nothing that can't be done in Calendar, but there's one feature that makes it stand out a little. Any to-do item can be immediately put off using a single button press. Its due date will be set back anywhere from one to 31 days (you can set this default number of days in the setup menu), and it'll pop back into your Today box when the new, procrastinated date rolls around.

Sure, when you get a reminder in Calendar, you can view it, edit it and assign a new time. Put Things Off's approach just lets you do that a little easier. Choose the tasks that need immediate attention; save the rest for later without risk of losing them. Things will only be trashed when you actively throw them away.

Wake Me Up on Thursday, Please

Graphically, Put Things Off is well-polished. The developers could have easily made the UI very bare-bones and still kept the functionality, but instead it has some good animation and a nice wooden desk background with off-white note paper. Even the icon looks nice, which is something I wish more developers would pay attention to. It's a detail, it's minor, and it won't turn a poorly designed app into a good one, but if you have a good app, why make the icon look lousy?

Unfortunately, there is no landscape typing mode.

I also wonder whether this app might be improved by adding some sort of time-of-day element to the mix. Put Things Off is more polite than Calendar because it won't barge in and remind you of what you need to do with a chime and a message at the moment you set it for. Instead, you have to actively open the app each day to see what's on the agenda. Sometimes, though, I need to be barged in on, I need a wake-up call, and adding the option to make any task buzz in and demand your attention at a given time on its set due date would be very helpful, as long as you could still use that Put Off function.

It wouldn't even need to be as active as a beep and a pop-up. Apps like Mail, App Store, Facebook , and lots of others use a little red badge in the upper right-hand corner to notify you of items in need of attention. Perhaps Put Things Off could use one of those for its Today list.

Nokia Tosses Another OSS OS Into the Mobile Mix

Nokia (NYSE: NOK) on Thursday announced the N900 smartphone, a mobile device running the Linux-based Maemo operating system that the company typically uses for its tablets.

The device runs a Mozilla-based browser and offers still and video photography, an FM radio and 3.5G and WLAN connectivity.

Maemo is the operating system used in Nokia's tablets, and the Finnish handset maker's description of the N900 shows it's moving to converge the computer, the Internet and the mobile phone.

Yahoo peps Search, Mail and Messenger

Yahoo has added slew of new features and updates to its three core offerings - Mail, Search and Messenger. Yahoo Mail, one of the top leading email services, gets more social features as one of the key milestone in Yahoo Open Strategy. Along with that, Yahoo Messenger 10 will also bring social tinge like showing status updates, photo sharing, video calls and other notifications.
Yahoo Mail gets the long deserved attachment limit raise to 25MB from 10MB per mail. New Application box combines Calendar, Notepad, and several other third party apps for streamlined single window Inbox. The Application box will contain third party apps like Picnik, ZumoDrive or PayPal along with several others coming in future.

Yahoo Mail's integration with popular social networks will be a boon to community website lovers. Users will be able to get updates from their contacts on various social networks and interact directly from Yahoo Mail window. Photo sharing would now be fun as users will be able to select several photos and share all of them at same time.

Yahoo has also redesigned its Mail's mobile version (m.yahoo.com) which can perform important functions including attachment downloads. This mobile version will now have read-write access to phone's folders. Also, Mail Contacts now will automatically get updated as the contact changes the name.

Yahoo Messenger 10 beta has new HD video calling support and new Y! Updates window that'll remind you of Facebook. Users will get status updates from their contacts on Yahoo Buzz, Flickr, Twitter and other series. Yahoo Insider now can be localized with pin code to obtain local information. Messages from Yahoo Messengers contacts can be received for different IM apps on iPhone. Basically, because the Yahoo 360 service that was rolled out to compete with MySpace and Facebook didn't work, Yahoo is lifting interface and adding more features to its Mail and Messenger services.

Yahoo Search will offer a new search results page that connects users directly to web content and new results filtering options. Also, Search Assist, Yahoo's real-time query suggestion engine, has been added to Yahoo universal header's search box for search suggestions. Users can also organize, save and share their search results with Search Pad. Check out images of the latest updates here.

Even after the deal with Microsoft, Yahoo Search continues to differentiate itself from Bing. "We are Yahoo and that will continue...We collaborate on the back-end but we are competitors on the front-end", clarified Prabhakar Raghavan, senior vice-president of Yahoo, at a press event held at company's headquarters.

Yahoo has sent out a clear word regarding its Search - We're still in competition!

LG Arena Sells a Million Units

LG's flagship touchscreen handset, the Arena KM 900, that was first seen in February 2009 has managed to rake up a million units in sales within five months of its launch.
The extremely popular handset has seen its popularity increase across the world ever since its launch, contributing to this milestone figure. The success of the LG Arena comes close on the heels of the successful launch of the LG Viewty, which, since its launch in October 2007, has seen 8 million units sold. In India, the Arena was only recently launched - in June. The extreme popularity of the Arena might also reflect in LG's global standing as one of the leading manufacturer of cell phones. It is competing with the likes of Samsung, Sony Ericsson and Motorola who, along with Nokia, at the top are the top five cell phone manufacturers of the world.

As for the LG Arena, the device comes with a 5 megapixel camera, supports high quality video recording (the Omnia HD is the new king here!) and comes with 8GB of internal memory, that can be expanded up to 32GB - thanks to its memory card slot that accepts mini SDHC cards. The phone is on sale in 53 countries around the globe and in India, it is priced at Rs. 24,990.

Microsoft's OneApp Released

Microsoft seems really interested in the mobile phone segment of late. If it announced a major partnership with Nokia a few weeks ago, its now time to announce its OneApp service which promises to bring smartphone like abilities to feature phones.
This also marks the beginning of Microsoft "deviation" into the non-smartphone scheme of things who, until now, had only the Windows Mobile smartphone OS in its mobile arsenal. Microsoft had never ventured into making hardware and it still seems committed to that policy. That however doesn't seem to have stopped the company from concentrating on non-smartphones.

As for OneApp, this happens to be a "do it all" application that will enable users to run various subsidiary applications under it's umbrella. These include mini Facebook, Windows Live Messenger

, Twitter and Mobile Wallet applications. It's a pretty light on the resources, "weighing" in at just 150KB. The add-on apps are just 30KB in size and hence should fit in most feature phones of today. The best thing about this is that it offers users to access the service "online" being more of a cloud service. Which means, users do not really store and install apps to their devices.

"When people see these apps running on a feature phone, their eyes light up. It's pretty exciting. What we're letting you do is get access to the applications and services you want from a device you already own. If you don't own a PC, or you share a PC, your mobile phone may be your first or only computing device," said Tim McDonough, Microsoft's senior director of Mobile Product Management.

OneApp will be initially launched in South Africa. For those wanting more, there's a video preview available as well - strangely showcasing the service being used on a Nokia smartphone!

Microsoft, Nokia, and Google Take Aim at RIM

Some of the biggest names in mobile technology are girding for battle against BlackBerry maker Research In Motion (RIMM) and iPhone creator Apple (AAPL).

Later this year, Google (GOOG) and partners that include handset maker Motorola (MOT) plan devices and features aimed at business users of mobile phones. Meantime, Nokia (NOK) and Microsoft (MSFT) are joining forces in their effort to take share in the lucrative market for company-friendly smartphones.

The moves are aimed mainly at RIM, the U.S. leader in smartphones for businesses, and defending against a rising threat from Apple and Palm (PALM). In July, RIM accounted for 34% of smartphone sales in the stores of the largest U.S. wireless service providers, and it boasted the most popular smartphone on the market, the BlackBerry Curve, according to research by Avian Securities.

Microsoft and Nokia announced their offensive on Aug. 12, saying that beginning in 2010 they'll unveil features including tight security and syncing with other devices. The companies also said they'll work together to get other applications, such as Microsoft's Office productivity tools, onto cell phones, and that by working together they can make it cheaper for corporations to support smartphones for employees.

Facebook testing Twitter-like "Lite" version

The Internet was buzzing Wednesday with talk of Facebook testing a streamlined "Lite" version of the social-networking service that could challenge microblogging sensation Twitter.

"We are currently testing a simplified alternative to Facebook.com that loads a specific set of features quickly and efficiently," the Internet star said in reply to an AFP inquiry.

"Similar to the Facebook experience you get on your mobile phones, Facebook Lite is a fast-loading, simplified version of Facebook that enables people to make comments, accept Friend requests, write on people's Walls, and look at photos and Status updates."

Facebook Lite is being tested in India and other countries where new users flooding to the service "are looking to start off with a more simple experience," according to the Palo Alto, California-based firm.

A test website at lite.facebook.com was accidently opened to an expanded audience on Tuesday night, but the slip was caught and traffic routed to standard Facebook pages.

Invitations to take part in a private test of "Facebook Lite" evidently reached a variety of US bloggers only to have the enclosed links vanish a short time later.

"Lite" screen shots captured and posted online revealed a Facebook page devoted to fresh comments and updates from friends in a style that could challenge the real-time interplay at Twitter.

Facebook announced on Monday that it has acquired FriendFeed, a Silicon Valley startup which allows members to see what their friends are doing online and share content.

Facebook said that the 12 employees of the Mountain View, California-based FriendFeed will join Facebook and its four founders will hold senior roles on Facebook's engineering and product teams.

The acquisition of FriendFeed and testing of "Facebook Lite" follows social-networking star's failed attempt last year to buy Twitter.

FriendFeed has been described as a potential rival to Twitter in its ability to conduct real-time search, an area where Facebook has been seeking to expand.

Facebook is the fastest growing social network on the Internet and has more than 250 million members.

Microsoft ordered to stop selling Word in US

A US judge has ordered Microsoft to stop selling its popular Word document creation application in the country in 60 days after finding that the software contains technology that violates a patent held by a third party.

Microsoft Office, which includes Word, accounted for more than $3 billion in worldwide sales in Microsoft's most recent fiscal year and is used by literally millions of businesses and consumers for everyday tasks like word processing and making spreadsheets and presentations.

I4i, a Toronto-based software maker, has been battling Microsoft over an obscure patent related to XML or Extensible Markup Language. XML is a key software component of many websites as well as Word and other programs.

Upholding a a May 20 jury decision Tuesday, Leonard Davis, a federal district court judge in Tyler, Texas, banned the world's largest software from selling Word 2003 , WWord 2007 and future versions of the software that use i4i's technology without a licence.

The judge also ordered Microsoft to pay several hefty fines to i4i, including $200 million in damages and $40 million in "enhanced damages".

"We feel vindicated with this reuslt," said Michael Vulpe, who co-founded i4i in 1993.

"It is not a question of fear or pride or anything else," said Loudon Owen, chairman of i4i. "We're very respectful of Microsoft, but when you're in the right you have to persevere."

Microsoft plans to appeal.

"We are disappointed by the court's ruling," spokesman Kevin Kutz said in a written statement. "We believe the evidence clearly demonstrated that we do not infringe and that the i4i patent is invalid."

The suit involves a patent i4i's founders obtained in 1998 that is the basis for a "customised XML" tool the company supplies to drug and defence companies and other large corporations, said Owen.

XML is a specialised alphabet that can capture any kind of computer file as a regular text. It's designed to make computer data human-readable - and make it easier for one programme to load and process data created by another programme.

Judge Davis found that Microsoft was aware of i4i's patent and that there was enough evidence of Microsoft "wilfully infringing" on the patent to issue the injunction, pending continuation of the case.

Investors shrugged off the news - perhaps in anticipation of a higher court overturning the ruling, which arose from the plaintiff-friendly Eastern Texas federal jurisdiction, Information Week reported.

Microsoft shares were up 1.6 percent to $23.50 in early trading in the US Wednesday.

Networking fiends beware of Koobface

If you have been getting tempting messages with video links in your accounts in social networking sites such as Facebook, Twitter, Myspace, Bebo, Friendster and Hi5, beware. Any attempt to download the promised video will make you another victim of Koobface, a worm that could steal critical and personal information from your computer.

The government's India Computer Emergency Response Team has warned that Koobface, a play on the name of social networking site Facebook, comes with an enticing tagline and spreads by spamming the contacts of the victim on networking sites.

With more than 3 million members of Facebook alone in India, Koobface's potential for wreaking havoc on the country's computer systems is immense — a fact that has prompted the government to issue the warning alert.

Typically, Koobface victims get a message from one of their contacts inviting them to click on a video link. The link leads you to a site mimicking the video-sharing site, Youtube. Once there, you are asked whether you want to download a software needed to watch the video.

If you click `yes', the worm gets activated, leaving your computer vulnerable. The worm not only disrupts your internet experience by sending your searches on engines like Google elsewhere and return garbled replies, it also steals data that may have been left in your computer's memory.

If you do or have already been Koobfaced the only way to protect your machine is to delete all files and registry keys that have been added by the worm. Internet users have also been advised by the government agency to install and maintain updated anti-virus software in their computers, as also a desktop firewall, and block ports which are not required.

While you may not be able to notice the worm rummaging through your electronic files searching for personal data, including passwords, the visible signs of the worm would show up on your internet browsing where you would get abnormal results to your searches and be misdirected to other sites.