NEW YORK: Barack Obama's aides, who ran the most tech-savvy US election campaign in history, were forced into a red-faced admission on Monday -- the White House email system has crashed.
"Our email system is not working so well," press spokesman Robert Gibbs told reporters at the start of his daily briefing.
"We'll endeavor to get you information from earlier in the day, hopefully in a little bit more of a timely manner, if we can get the email to work."
At one stage, Obama aides were forced to turn back the clock and hand out copies of memoranda signed by the president on cutting global warming, not via email as is normal, but by the dead tree method, on paper.
Outsourcing faces new era of scrutiny
27th January 2009
Adding to the sector's troubles are the massive corporate fraud uncovered recently at Satyam Computer Services Ltd, India's fourth largest software services provider. The scandal has Satyam customers scrambling to find alternative providers.
Other offshore services providers report stepped-up scrutiny from clients of their own corporate governance and financial viability. It has also revived questions about the trustworthiness of Indian accounts and the adequacy of corporate controls.
That's a big black eye for an industry that sells risk management and corporate governance services as a major client offering. It may raise the risk premium investors require for holding these stocks. Rising competition isn't the only threat to offshore outsourcers' margins.
Many of the more profitable, longer-term contracts worth tens or hundreds of millions of dollars are being put on hold as companies scramble to reassess their business strategies.
Customers want more control over projects and are demanding fixed-price deals that are more likely than not to limit margin growth. Infosys, Tata and others say they are doing their best to make up for price cuts by driving greater sales volumes.
Infosys confident can meet Q4 revenue view
28th January 2009
DAVOS: Infosys Technologies Inc is confident it can meet its fourth-quarter revenue target, Chief Operating Officer S D Shibulal said on Tuesday.
"Given where we are today, we are confident that we can meet Q4 guidance," Shibulal said at the World Economic Forum in Davos.
Infosys said in early January that it expected to pull in revenue of $1.13 billion to $1.17 billion for the March quarter.
Also on Tuesday, Shibulal said the Indian technology company does not expect it will need to tap the capital markets.
UK launches "Google for films" search engine
28th January 2009
LONDON: Fancy checking out the classic 1960s Japanese horror flick "Onibaba", or indulging in a bit of old-fashioned British comedy with "The Lavender Hill Mob"?
The UK Film Council is launching a search engine that will help British moviegoers track down their favourite films, from the mainstream to the obscure.
The website is free to use and contains records of more than 30,000 films, or roughly seven years' worth of viewing, and they come in 20 genres and over 60 languages.
"Like a Google for films, it is the first time anything like this has been delivered on the Internet that indexes all available films in the UK and is totally free to use," the council said in a statement.
Headstrong buys Lydian Data Services
28th January 2009
NEW DELHI: Headstrong, the $200 million global financial services consulting firm, on Wednesday announced the acquisition of Lydian Data Services (LDS), headquartered in Boca Raton, Florida.
The company will be closing one more buyout this year, the company's MD Harsh Singh Lohit told ET. Headstrong has a large presence in Noida with about 1600 employees and plans to hire another 350 for its mortgage BPO services division.
Nokia outsourcers its desktop maintenance and support to HCL
29th Jan 2009
MUMBAI: Handset maker Nokia has outsourced its desktop maintenance and support in 76 countries to IT services firm HCL Technologies in a multi-million dollar contract spread over five years, starting this April. The deal also involves transfer of employees from Nokia.
The contract will be serviced from HCL's centres in India, China, Po-land, Finland and US. It involves providing multi-lingual helpdesk services in 13 languages, creating and maintaining new user accounts, and workstation management and security. The value of the contract and the number of employees being transferred to HCL Technologies was not disclosed.
The contract is being moved from Nokia's existing vendors. HCL said it had won the deal against competition from global and Indian players.
TCS leads race for Sony's $100-million outsourcing deal
30th January 2009
BANGALORE: India’s largest software exporter TCS is leading the race to win an outsourcing contract worth $60-100 million from Sony, the Japanese electronics giant struggling under huge losses and a high cost operating structure.
“As part of its attempts to reduce cost of managing IT operations, Sony is discussing a contract to manage its desktops and servers over 3-5 years,” a person familiar with the discussions told ET on condition of anonymity.
While ET could not independently verify the details of this contract, at least two people familiar with the development confirmed that Sony is evaluating vendors. When contacted on Thursday, a TCS spokesperson said the company would not comment on specific customer contracts yet to be awarded.