Infosys planning to cut onsite jobs: Sources

In an attempt to ensure cost efficiency in its operations, Infosys -- India's second-largest IT services exporter -- is likely to reduce its onsite operations, reported ET Now. 

According to ET Now sources, Infosys is considering downsizing its onsite, which implies that a lot of people in the support functions are likely to face the possibility of a job cut. 

ET Now understands that the marketing team in the US is also on the radar. "Also, the Infosys management is looking to cut costs in the strategic global sourcing (SGS) division," ET Now reported. 

This is being seen as an attempt to restructure the sales engine in the US. "Infosys feels that the SGS group is overlapping with what the sales function does," ET Now added. 

It is believed that NR Narayana Murthy and his son Rohan Murty have been in the US for the last two weeks to fine tune the strategy to cut costs on onsite. Infosys' onsite cost accounts for 46% of total cost as of March 2013. The management refused to comment on any queries pertaining to 'internal organizational matters.' 

ET had earlier reported that Infosys under Chairman Murthy is centralising decision making. The chairman's office — the new power centre created after the return of retired co-founder Murthy — has to sign off on key decisions related to large technology contracts, such as pricing or the way a deal is structured that might expose Infosys to future risks, at least three senior executives told ET on the condition of anonymity. 

"For all practical purposes, Murthy is the chairman, CEO, COO all rolled into one," said one of the executives. 

Before Murthy's return, chief executive officer SD Shibulal was in the process of decentralizing decision-making, especially those related to negotiating and signing contracts. 

The intention was to empower client-facing sales executives who are aware of moves by competitors and other considerations critical in negotiating and winning large outsourcing contracts. Under that model, a business unit head would be empowered to close large deals. 

For Infosys, which gets the lion's share of its over $7-billion (Rs 42,000 crore) revenues from corporations in the US and Europe, this could mean longer decision cycles when it comes to large contract negotiations

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Soon, travel with Google‘s taxi service

Technology giant Google is planning to create a fleet of driverless 'robo-taxis' to pick up and drop off passengers. 

The ultimate goal of Google's self-driving car project is to create a 'robo-taxi' that picks up commuters on demand. 

Such a system could transform transport systems around the world, doing away with the need for most people to buy cars, company executives believe. 

They also believe that it would reduce the number of road accidents as well as having environmental benefits, 'The Times' reported. 

Google's move to create a driverless vehicle of its own comes after the company held talks with major manufacturers in recent months, hoping that carmakers would build vehicles that incorporated Google's self-driving software. 

Since the launch of its self-driving car project in 2010, Google has created self-driving systems that have been installed in both a Toyota Prius and a Lexus RX. 

Cameras, sensors, radars and the company's own software has been added to the cars. Such vehicles have been given the green light to be tested on British roads before the end of the year, website 'cnet.co.uk' reported. 

However, it is believed the carmakers have been reluctant to enter a partnership with Google, not wishing to give the technology giant a foothold within the motoring industry. 

Frustrated by the lack of progress, Google is understood to have turned to designing its own cars instead. 

Last week the German newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung reported that Google was close to reaching a deal with Continental, one of the world's largest car component makers, to supply parts for its vehicles. 

The robo-taxi system is being created within Google X, the department that develops futuristic technologies, including 'Glass' - a pair of high-tech spectacles that sends information straight to the eyes.

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Micromax, Karbonn beat Samsung, Apple in India: IDC

The rising demand for affordable smartphones in the major emerging markets of India and China has helped local mobile manufacturers surpass shipments by established global brands like Samsung and Apple in April-June quarter this year, research firm IDC says.

According to IDC data in the Asia/Pacific excluding Japan region, homegrown vendors shipped 46 million units, while Samsung and apple combined shipped 35 million units in second quarter this year.

Other global brands like HTC, BlackBerry, Nokia, Sony, LG and Motorala shipped a combined 10 million units, whereas, the internal vendors from China like Huawei, ZTE and Lenovo shipped a total of 27 million units in April-June 2013.

IDC identified Micromax, Karbonn, Lava, Maxx and Intex as the rising players in the emerging smartphone market in India and brands like Coolpad, K-Touch, Xiaomi, Gionee and Oppo in China.

The research firm said local brands in the world's two most populous country, part of Asia/Pacific (excluding Japan) region (APEJ), have aggressively scaled up their operations and are competitive on both price and hardware specifications.

"Aside from the top-tier international brands or Chinese brands that also ship globally like Huawei and ZTE, there is also a rising segment of homegrown brands, which as a group have been steadily rising in shipments and prominence," IDC said in its latest report on mobile shipments.

These homegrown players comprised 38% of second quarter 2013 volumes, up from 20% in the same quarter of 2012 and 7% in 2011 second quarter, it added.

Asia/Pacific region saw mobile shipments of 119 million units in April-June 2013, up 10% quarter-on-quarter and a huge jump of 75% from Q2 2012, IDC said.

"In emerging markets like China and India, IDC has seen many local competitors spring up, but only in the last few quarters have we seen them aggressively scale up, competitive on both price and hardware specs like bigger screens.

"We are now hitting a place where there are smartphones for every price point, where the masses will benefit from the slew of players bringing in more options," the firm said.

This is the first quarter that IDC saw both the under $50 segment of smartphones gain some traction in China. While, the 4-inch plus screen size segment drove most shipments, the 5-6-inch segment saw its first gain in both China and India, it added.

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3 things you may be doing wrong on Facebook

There are millions of Facebook users worldwide; however, many of them might be unaware of the fact that they are using the popular social media site in a wrong fashion. 

Those who use the site and post messages on their Timeline or their friends' Timeline might be unaware that what they post on timelines is still visible to others and none of it is 'private' and is visible to friends of friends or whichever customized settings one is using. 

Either one should directly send a message to the concerned person through clicking on the Messages link to the left of news feed and clicking on a new message button or going to the particular user's profile and clicking on the message button near the top right of the page, Fox News reports. 

Another usually done yet mostly unrealized feature is that of 'oversharing'. Most of the users do not realize that sharing everything on the social media might be a good way to let out all the updates of their lives but can also damage real-life relationships. 

The report said that if a user wants to post pictures of self, or photos with certain friends, settings should be either customized in a manner that other friends or family aren't offended or better still not post them at all. 

Apart from oversharing, the feature of putting in too much information in photos is risky. Smartphones today are enabled with embedded GPS info into photos which can let those who know how to extract the info get sensitive data about where the photos were taken including one's house, kids' school or other important locations. 

In order to turn off the feature, users can right click a photo and choose Properties and in the Details tab, click the 'Remove Properties and Personal Information' button for Windows. 

The report further added that in order to turn off the GPS feature while clicking photographs,iPhone users can change the Privacy Location Services from the Settings tab while Android users can change it from the Location Services tab and turn off the feature when not needed.

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Challenges before Microsoft‘s new CEO

The next CEO of Microsoft has one big decision to make: press on with retiring chief executive Steve Ballmer's ambitious plan to transform the software giant into a broad-based devices and services company, or jettison that idea and rally resources around its proven strength in business software. 

Ballmer's grand design - unveiled just six weeks before Friday's surprise announcement that he would retire within a year - calls for 'One Microsoft' to pull together and forge a future based on hardware and cloud-based services. 

But poor sales of the new Surface tablet, on top of Microsoft's years-long failure to make money out of online search or smartphones, have cast doubt on that approach. 

For years, investors have called on Microsoft to redirect cash spent on money-losing or peripheral projects to shareholders, while limiting its focus to the vastly profitable Windows, Office and server franchises. 

Activist investor ValueAct Capital Management LP, whose recent lobbying of the company may have played a role in Ballmer's decision to retire earlier than he planned, is thought to favor such an approach. 

In the last two years alone, Microsoft has lost almost $3 billion on its Bing search engine and other Internet projects, not counting a $6 billion write-off for its failed purchase of online advertising agency aQuantive. It took a $900 million charge for its poor-selling Surface tablet last quarter. 

For now at least, Microsoft seems intent on pursuing Ballmer's vision. John Thompson, Microsoft's lead independent director who is also heading the committee to appoint a new CEO, said on Friday the board is "committed" to Ballmer's transformation plan. 

The eventual choice of that committee - which has given itself a year to do its work - should provide a clue to how committed the board really is, and how open to outside advice. 

"Taking an internal candidate like Satya Nadella - the guy nurturing servers - or some of the other people on the Windows team, that makes sense to keep a steady hand through this reorganization and strategic shift," said Norman Young, an analyst at Morningstar. 

"But a strong case could be made that the company needs a breath of fresh air, someone who can execute on the strategy but also bring an outsider perspective," he added. 

That could mean selling the Xbox and abandoning Bing, or cutting short efforts to make tablets or other computers. 

Shareholders clamour for money, Ballmer's head
Throughout the last decade, as Microsoft's share price has remained flat, shareholders have called for bigger dividends and share buybacks to beef up their returns. 

Microsoft obliged with a one-time $3 a share special dividend in 2004 and has trebled its quarterly dividend to 23 cents since then. 

But shareholders still want a bigger slice of Microsoft's $77 billion cash hoard, $70 billion of which is held overseas. 

Rick Sherlund, an analyst at Nomura, believes that if the retirement of Ballmer means the company is listening to ValueAct and its supporters, then action on the dividend and share buyback could perhaps happen as early as September 19, when Microsoft hosts its annual get-together with analysts and is expected announce its latest dividend. 

"The momentum of shareholder activism is well underway and likely to benefit shareholders even though the process of how this unfolds is not certain," said Sherlund. 

The lackluster performance of Microsoft's stock has long been the stick that shareholders beat Ballmer with, and it has looked all the worse compared with the staggering gains made by Apple Inc under Steve Jobs. 

Yet Ballmer - who owns just under 4 percent of the company - never showed any doubts about his intention to stay in the job. His old friend and ally Bill Gates, who still owns 4.8 percent of the company, never wavered in his public support. 

The first public signs of dissent on Microsoft's board came in 2010, when Ballmer's bonus was trimmed explicitly for the flop of the infamous Kin 'social' phone and a failure to match Apple's iPad, according to regulatory filings. 

It was around that time, though not necessarily connected, that the board started considering how it would manage a succession, according to a source familiar with the matter. Ballmer and the board began talking to both internal and external candidates. 

About 18 months to two years ago, Ballmer started thinking seriously about a succession plan, the internal source said. 

The time since was not marked with glory for Ballmer, with a tepid launch of Windows 8, the disappointment of the Surface tablet, and a $731 million fine by European regulators for forgetting to offer a choice of browsers to Windows users. 

Two to three months ago, Ballmer started thinking seriously about his retirement and concluded it was the "right time to start the process," the source said. That was shortly after ValueAct took a $2 billion stake in Microsoft. 

July's gloomy earnings, which offered no immediate hope of quick improvement, may have sealed the decision. Ballmer said Friday he made the choice in the few days prior, and informed the board on Wednesday. Whether the board urged Ballmer to leave is not known. 

The impending exit of Ballmer leaves a difficult and perhaps impossible choice to his successor - pushing a large and insular behemoth through a highly risky transformation to the mobile world, or clinging to an island of profitable but PC-centric businesses. 

"I'm not sure there is someone who can do Steve's (Ballmer's) job 'better'. It's an incredibly difficult job, perhaps intractable," said Brad Silverberg, a former senior Windows executive and co-founder of Seattle venture capital firm Ignition Partners. "Perhaps the way the job is defined needs to change, and this is the harbinger of bigger changes to come."

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For women of Google, Glass has no ceiling

When Isabelle Olsson, the lead industrial designer for Google Glass, arrived at Diane von Furstenberg's New York studio to fit models for the new device, she wasn't concerned about how the models would look strutting along the runway wearing tiny screens and computers on their faces. 

Instead, she was nervous about colour. 

The current palette for the frames of Glass, the internet-connected eyewear, is limited: cotton (white), tangerine (orange), sky (blue) and two shades of gray. Although wearing a pop of turquoise or coral on your face might fly in Silicon Valley, Olsson worried they would clash on the runway. 

But when she entered the studio days before Fashion Week last fall, she saw coral crepe tunics and flowing turquoise pants. The styles, which von Furstenberg described as "rebel princess," just happened to be the same palette as Glass, despite being conceived long before the designer discovered the gadget. 

A week later, one model matched a tangerine Glass to the orange architectural squiggle on a jumpsuit, and another paired a sky Glass to a turquoise slouchy tank and bag. When von Furstenberg took her call at the end, she wore tangerine. On her arm was Sergey Brin, Google's co-founder, in sky. 

"I love colour, so I knew it was important, but not the extent to which it is about the emotional connection," said Olsson, who trained in Sweden and whose job interview at Google, in which she did not know the secret project she would be working on, included questions like, "Do you like yellow?" 

Olsson, 30, is one of a group of women charged by the company with turning Glass into the next It accessory. If high fashion and high tech are worlds apart, the women of Google Glass are like explorers, trying to connect the two. 

They are also pushing another boundary, as senior women in tech, where men still outnumber women three to one. The disparity is even more extreme among engineers. Yet at Glass, women are leading hardware and business efforts for one of Google's biggest-ever product gambles. 

Along with Olsson, the team includes Jean Wang, 33, a hardware engineer in charge of Glass features like optics and acoustics, and Kelly Liang, 39, the director of business development, who oversees partnerships with app developers and others. 

In an interview over a luau-style lunch at the company headquarters here, the three said they do not give much thought to their status as women in tech. 

Liang came from investment banking, where she said she became comfortable being the only person not in cuff links. Wang said that when she pursued her doctorate in electrical engineering, there were five men for every woman in her courses. 

"I've been inert to seeing myself as a woman versus a man," she said. "I see my colleagues as my colleagues, regardless of gender." 

"That being said," she added, "I think there's a lot more to do to encourage women in the technical space." 

The three said they are conscious of bringing a woman's perspective, as it were, to their work on Glass, whether it's trying it on people with long hair and feminine facial structure or thinking about the apps women would like to see (thus the partnership Ms. Liang struck with Elle for an app that delivers street-style photos and fashion news). 

There are the young women who tell Olsson after they see her speak about Glass that they want to become industrial designers or mechanical engineers, too, and the women with disposable income who ask where they can buy the product, which Google has said would be available more broadly to consumers next year (the cost has not yet been announced, though early testers paid $1,500)."Most of the people who stop me on the street are women," Olsson said. "Women have a different reaction than when they see some dude wearing it. It makes a difference seeing it on me." 

That is one of the reasons that — when a Tumblr blog titled White Men Wearing Google Glass (including one in the shower) — made the rounds on the internet, the women of Google Glass collectively cringed. 

"It frustrates me because it's not representative," Olsson said. 

Still, the blog highlighted not just technology's gender problem, but also Google Glass's style problem. While flaunting the newest gadget may be the epitome of style for people in the tech industry, something that could be so radically paradigm-changing is a harder sell for a set more accustomed to the double G's of Gucci. 

"We absolutely have to consider style and fashion, because once you put something on your body, it becomes part of your expression of who you are," said Jennifer Darmour of Artefact, a technology design firm. "For the broader mainstream, I think Google Glass is devoid of style." 

Still, the fashion world is intrigued by something that is both a new potential shopping pathway and an accessory in its own right. 

von Furstenberg said she decided to include Glass in her show after running into Brin, a friend, in Sun Valley, Idaho. He was "wearing these odd glasses," she said, and when she tried them on, "I was floored." 

Accessories, von Furstenberg said, "tell someone that extra bit about you, and I think to wear Glass is to show that you are engaged, you are current, you are open to new things." 

Vogue has dedicated 12 pages in its September issue to a futuristic spread featuring models wearing Glass, sleek hair and minimalist designs, like an oversize amethyst Stella McCartneycoat, in a rusted steel house in Texas resembling an alien spaceship. 

"For me, the trend of the season was colour and the attitude was the future," said Tonne Goodman, Vogue's fashion director, who oversaw the feature. She said Glass lent "a fantasticdimension to it." 

And Miu Miu's new Rasoir sunglasses bear a resemblance to Glass, with their frame across the top of the eyes that cuts away below. A spokeswoman declined to comment on whether Miuccia Prada was inspired by Glass, but the sunglasses have sold out twice in the Bay Area. 

As wearable technology moves beyond research labs, other tech and fashion companies are also experimenting with how to turn devices into accessories. 

Apple hired Paul Deneve, the former chief executive of the Yves Saint Laurent Group, to work on "special projects," widely believed to be wearable computing like a smartwatch. The designerRebecca Minkoff made a hot pink studded clutch that opens to reveal Bluetooth-connected speakers. A new clutch called Everpurse wirelessly charges smartphones tucked inside. 

Liang acknowledged that Glass does not yet suit everyone, but said the fashion industry's embraceof it has made a difference. 

"All of a sudden it wasn't just an electronics device," she said of von Furstenberg's show. "It was a fundamental shift in the way consumers and partners looked at Glass, as a fashion accessory that could be beautiful." 

She hinted that more styles and apps are coming that would make Glass attractive to a wider audience, like frames in different styles and ones that could clip onto prescription lenses. Olsson recently revealed a prototype with a hipster tortoise frame. 

The new devices are a far cry from the original prototypes created by the Glass engineers. They took a cellphone's motherboard, a battery and a Pico projector and taped it all to a pair of white plastic frames printed with a 3D printer. 

Then they had to make it look good, but still function. 

"Usually you get design briefs, and they're documents and requirements and schedules," Olsson said. "But this brief was short and sweet: it was 'comfortable and beautiful.' Which was terrifying." 

One of the biggest problems was that device components are made for rectangular boxes — computers and phones — and not for wearable gadgets. 

Olsson and Wang kept pushing the engineers to shrink things. One day they took the camera, shaved off a few centimeters and reattached it, finding it still worked. 

Liang and Olsson traveled to Asia for inspiration, like a teacup with glaze around the edge that led to a black border on Glass. 

"I die for Japanese design and architecture," Olsson said. "Sometimes when we're struggling with something, I say, 'Make it more Japanese' — clean and considered and balanced but still bold and edgy." 

That also describes how she incorporates Glass into her look. She favours tangerine ("I'm very pale so I don't mind a pop of colour") to go with her red hair, minidresses, slouchy Givenchy bag and signature robin's egg blue fingernails. 

Wang wears charcoal ("It works well with different clothing"), and Liang, who says Glass is most useful while driving her children in her minivan, likes cotton. 

It matches the mother-of-pearl Rolex her husband gave her for an anniversary: a watch she wears only for sentimental reasons now, she said, because Glass, seen out of the corner of her eye, is already telling her the time.

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HP unveils new support services

HP has launched new consulting and support services that improve network simplicity, scalability and agility, enabling organizations to reduce the time spent on IT maintenance so they can take on more strategic initiatives. 

Cloud, virtualization, mobility and big data are placing unprecedented demands on data center network flexibility and agility. Technology enablers such as Internet Protocol version 6 (IPv6) and software defined networking (SDN) reduce complexity and improve agility. However, many of today's multivendor data center environments are too complex, over-provisioned and rigid to support new technology options. 

HP Technology Services can help customers solve the challenges posed by these new technologies, enabling them to ultimately deliver better flexibility and agility in their networks. Serving as a single point of contact, HP works closely with customers to develop a network modernization vision and roadmap that incorporates open standards, IPv6 and SDN. In addition, HP also provides flexible support to help operate and evolve heterogeneous data center networks to meet changing business needs. 

"Many enterprises and governments struggle to implement strategic data center projects because IT resources are bogged down with maintenance issues and network inefficiencies," Biswanath Bhattacharya, VP & GM, India Technology Services, Enterprise Group, HP India. "By reducing complexity, improving connectivity and optimizing performance, HP Technology Services allows customers to shift their resources from IT administration to innovation."

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