Narayan Murthy, Chairman, Infosys had earlier supported multiple standards for the IT industry. The company is currently in a silent period due to the upcoming quarterly results. Industry body, Nasscom is fiercely opposing the idea of a single and royalty-free standard.

“Ways can be worked out commercially to make a large e-governance project viable. Making everything patent-free may not be a commercial proposition as there might not be good standards available. On the other hand, adopting a single standard may constrict the country to adopt an old standard, if a new and better standard emerges in future. We support multiple standards which ensure interoperability at zero cost,” said Rajdeep Sehrawat, Vice President, Nasscom.

The global currency markets continue to be volatile. During the quarter, the rupee appreciated against the dollar from Rs.50.72 to Rs.47.91 on average,” said Infosys chief financial officer V. Balakrishnan.
In dollar terms too, consolidated revenue is expected to be in the range of $1.11-1.13 billion) in the second quarter, projecting a decline of 8.7-7.1 percent YoY, as per the International Financial Reporting System (IFRS).

Similarly, for the whole fiscal, consolidated revenue is projected to decline 4.6-3.1 percent YoY to $4.45-4.52 billion, as per the IFRS.

“We continue to invest in the future to take advantage of the growth opportunities in the medium and long-term,” Gopalakrishnan said.
On annualised basis, net profit for the first quarter grew by 17.3 percent to Rs.15.27 billion (Rs.1,527 crore) from Rs.13.02 billion (Rs.1,302 crore) a year ago, while revenue increased 12.7 percent to Rs.54.72 billion (Rs.5,472 crore) from Rs.48.54 billion (Rs.4,854 crore) in the same period year ago, as per the Indian accounting standard.

“The job-hopping tendency of Indian engineers is a stumbling block in the path of gaining deeper technical knowledge,” said Rick Steffens, Head of Hewlett Packard’s Systems Technology and Software Division. As reported in Reuters,he also opined that the country should make it attractive for the engineers to stay within rather than shifting to tech multinationals.

The absolute value of the engineers in the country is low though the talent pool is large. “If you look at experienced talent, the people who have spent 15-25 years in product development, that bench is still thin in India,” said Noshir Kaka, Director at McKinsey & Co, a global consultancy firm.

However, some researchers say that the curriculum followed by most of the engineering schools in the country is neither industry oriented nor made for R&D needs. The country’s educational system does not support academic or research excellence and lacks good faculty and infrastructure. “The total output of Ph.Ds in India is probably about the same as that of a single good university in the U.S.,” said Guruduth Banavar, Head of IBM’s India Research Laboratory. “And the best folks who could potentially go on for Ph.Ds end up taking jobs because there are so many good jobs available,” he said.

The lack of educational standards in India limits not only the scope of collaboration between the Indian counterparts of the technology companies but also higher-value R&D efforts. Vivek Mansingh,Country Manager, Dell India said, “I think in the future a lot of that interaction will move here and standards bodies will form here.”

According to the forecast made by Gartner Inc, a leading global IT research and advisory company, the economic situation combined with the effect of exchange rate movements has resulted in continued weak IT spending.

“While the global economic downturn shows signs of easing, this year IT budgets are still being cut and consumers will need a lot more persuading before they can feel confident enough to loosen their purse strings,” said Richard Gordon, research vice president and head of global forecasting at Gartner.

“The forecast decline in spending growth for the hardware and software segments in 2009 has almost stabilised, and only minor downward revisions have been made to these forecasts this quarter,” Gordon said.

“However, the full impact of the global recession on the IT services and telecommunications sectors is still emerging, and forecast growth in these areas has been further reduced significantly.”

According to Gartner, the rise in the value of the U.S. dollar against most currencies in recent months will have a material downward impact on the 2009 IT spending growth.

All four major segments of IT – hardware, software, IT services and telecommunications – will experience declining revenue, the study says.

The computing hardware segment will experience the steepest decline in 2009, with spending projected to decline 16.3 percent. The software segment will show the least decrease, with spending forecast to drop 1.6 percent.

Megamart had invested in Oracle Retail applications in 2008 and went live with the first phase in April this year. In this first phase, IBM has helped Megamart successfully implement the Oracle Retail applications to integrate with Megamart’s existing financial and point of sale applications. “Oracle Retail applications implemented at Arvind Mills are being used by leading retailer all over the world. These applications have been designed drawing from global retail best practices and will offer benefit of high scalability to Arvind’s business operations,” said Mukesh Mathur, Retail Sales Director, Oracle India. According to Spring Research, IT revenue from the Indian retail segment were $253 million in 2006 and is expected to grow to $1.07 billion by 2010, with a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 44 percent.

“Given the current economic scenario, this IT initiative is a big boost for our retail business, in terms of improving our operational efficiencies and service to our stores and thus ultimately our customers,” said J Suresh, CEO, Arvind Brands and Retail. He feels that IT is one of the key elements that will support their retail growth and expansion. With collaboration from our IT partners; Oracle and IBM, Megamart is already experiencing significant benefits in retail operations.

Even though it is too early for Megamart to report the profits attained due to phase one, they have listed many benefits they have achieved so far. This includes upto 45 percent more stock keeping units being processed in 20 percent less time. Also, there has been 25 percent improvement in picking and order fulfillment efficiencies. Megamart claims that these applications have helped them attain a 100 percent control over time and quantity during order receipt process. Oracle has also helped Megamart increase the productivity of the warehouse, ensuring that Megamart customer are able to find the brands, styles and sizes they are seeking.

According to Suresh few years back when they compared themselves with global retailers they were shocked to see where they stand. It was clear that they will have to use technology to help them grow. They needed inventory management and a one stop solution for all its application. They zeroed in on Oracle as it had experience in international retail and they claimed that 20 of the top 20 global retailers run oracle. IBM had already implemented Oracle application at many places, so it was easier for Megamart to select them to implement these applications.