The ThinC Times (Oct 28 - Nov 10)

SanDisk fends off Samsung advances with $1 billion Toshiba deal

In a $1 billion deal, flash-memory maker SanDisk Corp. is agreed to sell Toshiba Corp 30 per cent of the manufacturing capacity the two maker of memory cards used in cameras, Toshiba is No.2 in flash memory behind Korean rival Samsung. It has been only a month that Milpitas, California-based SanDisk rejected a $5.85 billion buyout offer from Samsung, citing the offer of $26 a share as too low. Under a nonbinding agreement with Japan's Toshiba, SanDisk would sell part of its capacity in their 50-50 flash joint ventures in exchange for cash and reduced leasing costs that would total about $1 billion. The companies, which jointly own two factories in Yokkaichi, western Japan, will split the remaining 70 per cent of the output equally. SanDisk would retain the option to buy some of the chips made by the equipment it sells to Toshiba. The two companies operate three joint ventures and will also continue to jointly invest in the next generation of flash-memory products.
Samsung has a 42.3 per cent share of the NAND flash memory- chip market in the second quarter, compared with Tokyo-based Toshiba's 27.5 per cent and Hynix Semiconductor Inc.'s 13.4 per cent. Flash memory is used in a variety of consumer devices such as wireless phones, MP3 players, mini-computer drives and digital cameras.

Yahoo chopping more than 1,000 jobs

Yahoo, the second biggest search engine company after Google is reportedly cutting more than 1,000 jobs across the board after the first round of 1,000 cuts in January as a cost cutting measure against the backdrop of the declining US economy that has led to reduced spending on online advertising, with analysts predicting a loss of $6.7 billion in online advertising revenue, forcing Yahoo to adopt hard cost-cutting measures. Yahoo currently has a headcount of 14,300 after laying off about 1,100 employees in January. The Sunnyvale Company is expected to announce the job cuts after it releases its third quarter financial results which according to analysts will be disappointing as they expect sales to rise but earnings to fall up to 9 cents per share. Yahoo has forecasted revenue of between $1.78 billion to $1.98 billion for the third quarter and between $7.35 billion and $7.85 billion for the year. In its bid to cut costs, Yahoo had hired consulting firm Bain & Co. in September to review its costs and make structural changes. Some Yahoo managers will be asked to cut operating budgets by about 15 per cent.
Google, however, seems to have bucked the trend, with its third quarter 2008 earnings appearing to be recession-proof; the search engine leader registered a 26 per cent rise in profits to $1.35 billion from quarterly revenues, including commissions to advertisers $5.54 billion, a rise of 31 per cent. Its earnings had grown strongly due to its core online search and advertising businesses. Search engine will thrive despite the slowing economy, because its technology can find customers more cheaply than marketing.
In a bid to boost its revenue by $800 million, yahoo tied up with its arch rival Google, to display ads sold by Google along with its search results. But the launch of this venture, which was slated for the beginning of this month, is in jeopardy as the US Justice Department investigates whether the alliance would diminish competition in the online ad market. Yahoo has been negotiating with Time Warner about a possible acquisition of AOL for a deal which could cost Yahoo between $8 billion to $10 billion and the structure of the deal would see AOL being a part of Yahoo and Time Warner having a minority stake, in a deal that had been considered earlier, as well.

TCS awarded Rs1,000-crore passport automation project

Tata Consultancy Services has a signed a Rs1,000-crore deal with the ministry of external affairs (MEA) for the passport automation project, the largest mission-critical e-governance project floated by the centre. The project would enable it to issue new passports within three working days and under the Tatkal scheme dispatch passports the same day, subject to address and police verifications of the applicants. The passport automation project would digitize passport services and allow online filing of applications. With this project going on-line, applicants have the alternative option of filling the intelligent character recognition (ICR)-enabled form which along with all relevant documents will be scanned and submitted at passport facilitation centers. The project will be implemented under the buy-own-operate-transfer basis with the pilot project to be operational within 19 months. The countrywide roll-out of the passport automation project will take place within six years and the government is expected to open 77 'passport filing centers' across the country in a phased manner. TCS will have end-to-end responsibility of implementing this project. The passport filing centers will be the primary hubs supporting all activities including biometric capture, photograph, payment and verification and issue of passports in the presence of applicants for most cases.

Sun Micro introduces free alternative to Microsoft Office

Microsoft has a new problem on its plate with rival Sun Microsystems unveiling Open Office 3.0, the latest product to compete with its ubiquitous, and high-revenue, Office suite. Moreover, it has been so popular that the site partly crashed due to excessive traffic. The software suite combines word processing, spreadsheet, and presentation tools similar to the Microsoft Office suite. The open source version, however, is free, making it an attractive alternative for people or businesses that need only basic capabilities. The biggest improvement to Open Office 3 is the ability to open Office 2007 files. However, some files, such as .docx, .xisx, and .pptx, can only be read. The second major enhancement is a new version for the Apple Mac. The upgrade installs and runs like a normal OS X application. As the global economic crisis dries up credit and adversely affects IT budgets, corporate chiefs and administrators are going to be more open to a Microsoft Office alternative that is more compatible with Microsoft Office. So, the product may end up eating into Microsoft's revenues considerably, especially as IBM has also expressed support for the open-source software.
OpenOffice.org is a free cross-platform office application suite available for a number of different computer operating systems. It supports the ISO standard Open Document Format (ODF) for data interchange as its default file format, as well as Microsoft Office 97-2003 formats, Microsoft Office 2007 format (ability to "open" documents in version 3), among others.OpenOffice.org was originally derived from StarOffice, an office suite developed by StarDivision and acquired by Sun Microsystems in August 1999. The source code of the suite was released in July 2000 with the aim of reducing the dominant market share of Microsoft Office by providing a free, open and high-quality alternative; later versions of StarOffice are based upon OpenOffice.org with additional proprietary components.

Infosys to provide digital convergence platform for Bharti's DTH TV services

Bharti Airtel Ltd has announced an innovation and technology partnership with Infosys Technologies Limited for its newly launched direct-to-home (DTH) television service. Infosys will provide technology products that will help deliver improved services to the subscribers of Airtel digital TV (its direct-to-home (DTH) TV service), launched on 9 October. Airtel's digital TV technology will use Infosys' digital convergence platform to bring digital lifestyle applications offering interactivity and personalization into the living room. This will include interactive and non-intrusive applications like widgets that can be invoked by the user to view relevant and customized information. Airtel TV viewers will be able to access local city information through interactive applications such as iCity and enables hassle-free internet-like experience on their televisions with iNet, get live and personalized stock quotes, breaking news, horoscopes, cricket scores and shopping deals in the city without interrupting their TV-viewing experience. Airtel digital TV customers will also offer select websites packaged suitably for TV-viewing, in an application called tPortal.

Government clears Rs1, 237 crore funding of state level IT infrastructure

The department of information technology (DIT) has approved the setting up of state data centres (SDC) in 27 states/UTs, involving a total outlay of Rs1, 237 crore. Operations in 15 states are expected to start by June next year. The department will have a share of Rs412 crore in the project, with the remaining Rs825 crore coming through additional central assistance. The project aims to create a common secure IT infrastructure to host state level e-governance applications/data to enable seamless delivery of government-to-government (G2G), government-to-citizen (G2C) and government-to-business (G2B) services. These centers will be supported by wide area network (WAN) and common service centers (CSC) established at the village level, as part of e-governance project. The central government approved the scheme for establishing data centers across 35 states/UTs across the country on 24 January 2008, with a total outlay of Rs1,623.20 crore towards the capital and operational expenses over a period of 5 years. The states/UTs have been categorized in three categories viz: large, medium and small. It is expected that the data centers in about 12-15 states shall be set up and operational by end-June 2009. Data centers in the remaining states/UTs shall be progressively implemented from August 2009 onwards and the entire exercise is expected to be completed by December 2009/March 2010, considering a standard time for implementation of about 10 to 12 months. Once established, state data centers would provide much functionality, including central repository of the state, secure data storage, online delivery of services, citizen information/services portal, state intranet portal, remote management and service integration etc to enable seamless delivery of e-governance services in the states. The progress of implementation of data centre is currently being reviewed by the DIT with the states.

Lenovo introduces futuristic consumer PCs

Lenovo has introduced a complete range of futuristic consumer PCs - seven new notebook PCs with five choices of screen size and a diverse palette of colour, style and design. Futuristic features of the range include expanded facial recognition for simple and convenient log-in, gesture recognition for ease of use, one-key rescue system to recover data with just one touch and high-definition entertainment features.
The new notebooks from Lenovo are based on Intel Centrino 2 processor technology and pave the way to HD entertainment, rich online gaming and faster broadband wireless speeds, pretty much packing all of the features of home entertainment system into a laptop. And on the other hand, the Lenovo S9 and S10 series are based on the Intel Atom.

Google unveils mail application to help prevent drunken gaffes

Google has made a name for itself in the annals of innovation with such gems like Gmail, Picasa, Google Maps and the uncluttered search engine Google itself. Now, the Mountain View, California-based company has come out with an innovative product which is simplicity itself, but at the same time, extremely useful - Gmail Goggles. There have been numerous instances when a user, drunk or otherwise emotionally fragile, has sent forth a missive via email to his boss or girlfriend (or both) at night, only to regret it in the morning when sober.
Now, Google Labs, with its software engineer Jon Perlow, has developed an application that will provide a system of checks and balances before that incriminating email is sent out. The Gmail Goggles program consists of a few mathematics questions that the user has to answer in about one minute. If he passes the test, he can forward the e-mail. If the alcohol keeps him from doing the calculations, Google will briefly tell him: ''Water and bed for you. Or try again''. Of course, it's an optional application that can allow one to avoid it if he really doesn't want it to restrain his e-mail sending options when drunk. It is pre-set activated on Friday and Saturday nights, but the user can encounter the math problems every day if he really wants to. To activate it, one must simply log in to his Google account and activate the option from the Labs menu.

Apple unveils new notebook range, powered by Intel and NVIDIA

Computer maker Apple unveiled seven new notebooks in three form factors on Tuesday, and at the same time showed its affinity towards two emerging technologies - general purpose processing using specialised graphical processing units (GPUs) and solid state drives (SSDs). While the new products didn't actually incorporate the former, the use of NVIDIA's GeForce 9400M motherboard lends credence to the theory. In tapping NVIDIA for integrated graphics in the new MacBooks, Apple may be sending signals that its next operating system release will include some general-purpose GPU (GPGPU) computing capabilities.
NVIDIA's graphics processors, of course, support CUDA, the GPU programming language the company has built for software developers. While central processor performance is still of paramount importance in PCs, NVIDIA and its developer partners have already demonstrated that certain parallel computing tasks can be carried out with much greater efficiency on graphics processors than on CPUs. But for now, all general-purpose processing for these notebooks are being carried out by Intel Core 2 Duo processors. Apple has also embraced SSDs in its new line-up but had kept the option of basic hard disk configurations alive. The two new MacBooks, three MacBook Pros and one of two new MacBook Airs in the latest lineup have 128GB SSD upgrade options from normal hard disk drives. The more expensive of the pair of MacBook Airs, the $2,499, 1.86GHz version, comes with the 128GB SSD in its basic configuration.

IBM opens ILOG tender offer

IBM commenced a $340 million cash tender offer to acquire French software maker ILOG, which the company hopes to leverage to boost its presence in the lucrative business process management (BPM) market. IBM's subsidiary Citloi SAS is offering €10 or $13.70 for each ILOG share in France and its American depositary shares held in the US. Both offers are expected to end on 17 November.
BPM software is used in planning, monitoring and analysis of business processes such as billing, distribution and marketing. It is seen as a way for companies to streamline internal systems and improve customer service. BPM is a great prospect for companies trying to stretch their dollars as the economic downturn tightens tech spending worldwide. In their endeavor to wring as much value as possible out of their existing IT hardware, IT research firm IDC has estimated that the BPM market is growing at around 44 per cent per annum, and could be valued at $5.5 billion by 2011. IBM's ILOG acquisition has been cleared as per the Hart-Scott-Rodino Antitrust Improvement Act of US and authorized by the French Minister of Economy. It is subject to European antitrust regulations and to the condition of expiry of the offers.
BPM enables companies to model, automate, monitor, and redesign business processes, such as opening a bank account, documenting a medical record, or customizing an insurance policy. It enables companies to improve customers' service and increase efficiency, automation and accuracy. Using BPM, companies can examine tasks within an organization, particularly those done manually or involving significant document processing, and apply BPM to automate or streamline them. Such processes are becoming increasingly critical as business operations become more complex and information volumes grow at phenomenal rates. For example, a business rule might be applied to elevate a premier customer to the front of a phone queue as part of a customer service process. ILOG's Business Rule Management System provides users with tools that allow greater control over the criteria that determine how and when to route those premier customers. As such, businesses can accelerate the process of initiating policy changes that may be driven by market trends or competitive activity to ensure customer satisfaction is maintained.