CIO-Reinvented Blog - By Prashanth Rai

Daily Reading - 1st Jan 2009

When your laptop is a pain in the neck

If you use a laptop for hours at a stretch, you’re setting yourself up for muscle problems that can make your entire upper body hurt. Simple ways to make a laptop more ergonomic

Supporters of Satyam launch website,blame media for Satyam crisis

In a damage control initiative, the supporters hosted a dedicated website here on Thursday, which has received good number of messages across the world. With a tag line of "Satyameva Jayate", the website solicits public support

25 Years of Mac: From Boxy Beige to Silver Sleek

It's the 25th anniversary of the Apple Macintosh, but Steve Jobs' eyes are dry. At the company headquarters in Silicon Valley, where he was presenting a set of new laptops to the press last October, I mentioned the birthday to him. Jobs recoiled at any suggestion of nostalgia. "I don't think about that," he said. "When I got back here in 1997, I was looking for more room, and I found an archive of old Macs and other stuff. I said, 'Get it away!' and I shipped all that shit off to Stanford. If you look backward in this business, you'll be crushed. You have to look forward."

Web 2.0 Summit Presentation and Talk

An important part of our future is being invented out in the world. And it is from that world that I want to share stories about two companies I am involved in. Between them, they cover the two most important screens of our interactive lives - the computer and the mobile. The two companies are Novatium and NetCore.

Prashanth Rai

IDC'c view on Indian Domestic IT & Related Services Spend

The news for the first day of the year isn't great for the "IT Services" industry. Livemint published an article summarizing some of the views of IDC about the Domestic market.

India’s domestic information technology (IT) and services industry will see slower growth in the next five years beginning 2009, due to an economic slowdown that will force customers to spend less on new projects, and increased competition, according to technology researcher IDC (India) Ltd.

IDC predicts spending on technology such as computers, servers and developing software for local firms to grow at annual average of 16.4% through 2013, down from an average of 24.3% annual growth between 2003-2008.

With the exception of telecom firms, potential customers will spend less on technology and services in 2009, the firm predicts.

IT spending in India is expected to grow slower, at 13.4%, while the growth in global technology spending will be reduced by half to 2.6% in 2009, due to a recession in the world’s two largest technology markets—the US and Europe—and a shrinking of economic growth in most countries.

India’s domestic IT hardware, software and backoffice services market grew 17.3%, just over Rs1 trillion in 2008, ending the first five-year phase, a period that saw the country’s economy touching growth rates of 9%, according to a study by the reseacher.

“This would eventually pave way for innovative services (for both consumers as well as enterprises by leveraging the existing infrastructure built so as to align with emerging opportunities”.

2009 is going to be a year of challenge and opportunity for the small & midsized IT services providers - it is an opportunity to provide additional value to the customers and be more competitive, as they don't have pre defined cost structures and methodologies of larger companies which have been defined assuming /factoring in the rates, the models & growth percentages of the past.

Tags: idc - livemint - india - it+services - smb - it+spending - domestic

Prashanth Rai