Google too is reducing the rate of hiring...

Some days back the companies were having the problem to control the attrition rate of the employees and now the scene is entirely changed, companies are throwing there employees from their companies and the job market is very tight. In the same sequence is entering the Giant Brand Google. This company is not hiring these days. While writing this, I remember that some days back a US based companies has given the offer letter to 16 or 19 students IITians but due to this financial crisis they have send the regret letter for not calling them there. The 70% reduction in the salaries of the Trainee Pilots in Kingfisher comes also in the same row.
But the reason for Google to reduce the hiring is that they are moving for some acquisitions as per Chief Executive Officer Eric Schmidt.
The slowdown means more advertising budgets are ``under stress'' and Google is being ``more careful,'' Schmidt said in an interview with Bloomberg Television in New York.
Google's profit growth slowed to its lowest level this year last quarter as some advertisers, including home and auto lenders, cut back on ad space to reduce costs. Shrinking ad budgets have hurt newspapers the most, Schmidt said.
``All of us are vulnerable,'' he said. ``It's a race between a contraction in advertising, which would affect everybody, and a very positive shift from offline to online.'' The shares have fallen 45 per cent this year on investors' concern that a weakening global economy will hurt ad sales. Google, based in Mountain View, California, climbed $6.78, or 1.8 per cent, to $379.32 at 4 pm in Nasdaq Stock Market trading. Google, which handles almost two-thirds of US Internet searches, has spent more than $3.38 billion in the past 12 months on acquisitions such as DoubleClick Inc to extend its lead over Yahoo Inc and Microsoft Corp. The company's dominance pushed Microsoft to make an unsolicited offer for Yahoo in January, a bid that fell though in May. A global credit crunch may cost the online-ad business $6.7 billion in lost sales through 2010, according to Collins Stewart Plc. Borrowing costs surged after at least 15 banks failed this year, hurt by the collapse of the subprime mortgage market. Earnings performance Profit rose 26 per cent to $1.35 billion, or $4.24 a share, in the third quarter, Google said last week. Excluding costs such as stock-based compensation, profit was $4.92, beating the $4.75 average analyst estimate, according to a Bloomberg survey.
Google has no plans to cut back employee perks, such as gourmet cafeterias, Schmidt told reporters today. The company will keep spending on dat
a centers in preparation for more ``cloud computing'' products, he said. Cloud computing lets users store information on the Internet and access it from any computer. ``We're in a massive shift from how we're doing computing,'' Schmidt said. Web search queries on mobile-phones are growing at a rate ``quite a bit higher'' than Google's overall expansion, Schmidt said. The company's Android operating system allows developers to create programs for mobile phones. T-Mobile USA Inc, a unit of Deutsche Telekom AG, will release the first Android-powered phone, the G1, on Oct 22 in the US. Newspaper revenue The economic slowdown may mean US Internet ad spending growth is less than 20 per cent next year, a rate not seen since 2002, Sandeep Aggarwal, an analyst at Collins Stewart in San Francisco, said last week. Selling ads for online news sites is also proving to be problematic, because readers spend an average of 22 minutes reading the print product versus an average four minutes spent on a newspaper's Web site, Aggarwal said. Schmidt said he doesn't know what newspapers should do about rising newsprint costs and the loss of advertising revenue. Schmidt has endorsed Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama, and said the candidate could run Google. ``He's a pretty smart guy,'' said Schmidt, who reiterated that Google as a company is neutral in the election. ``I'm sure he could learn how to do it.'' Schmidt also called for greater transparency from the US government, saying it should publish an itemised budget every year. Washington is ``dysfunctional,'' he said.
SOURCE:indiatimes INFOTECH

Japan:Indian IT's next goldmine.

After the US Financial crisis, what could be the next market place for the Indian IT companies. The European market is one of the option among the markets which is opened for Indian IT companies. As India is a leader in the field of IT many more doors are opened and in the same series of countries cames JAPAN, coming up with the advancement in the Information Technology. Here are some of the opportunities in the world's second largest economy where Indian IT may see a diversified market.

1. Opportunity 1: Second-biggest market-With IT services market worth $108 billion, Japan has the second largest information technology market in the world. India’s share in this market ranges between mere $1 to 1.5 billion. Incidentally, offshoring is limited to 8-10 per cent of the total market. Japan is also the world’s a second largest economy and is highly dependent on technology. Presently, Japan makes for only 2 per cent of India’s exports.
2. Opportunity 2: Application development-Japan has low overall IT spending with spend/sales ratio being around 1-1.5 per cent for most industries as compared to around 3.5- 4 per cent in the US. BFSI and manufacturing are the highest spenders amongst all industries. Embedded systems development and engineering and R&D services are the prospective quick win service offerings for Indian vendors. Application development and maintenance are the next big opportunities. Japan witnesses heavy preference for custom-built applications over packaged software with most Japanese companies continuing to operate legacy mainframe applications, requiring extensive COBOL skills to maintain and enhance their systems.
3. Opportunity 3: Implementation opportunities-There has been an increased willingness among Japanese companies to adopt packaged products over custom development in the wake of global competition. This change offers huge implementation opportunities for Indian companies. Also, there is opportunity for Indian IT companies to establish themselves as the high-end service providers, with differentiated service offerings compared to their Chinese counterparts.
4. Opportunity 4: Manpower shortage-The aging Japanese economy in its expansion phase is facing acute manpower shortage and strong global competition in terms of cost as well as innovation. This is forcing companies in Japan to look for alternatives for sourcing services as well as to look for newer markets. India is a natural ally, complementing the needs with its excellent service delivery expertise and a huge consumer market Indian IT vendors are regarded high on technology and domain competence, with fast ramp-up capabilities. The companies are also seen as low on cost and with a better IP protection environment than China. There is respect for Indian culture as well as recognition of the prowess of the Indian IT sector in Japan. Along with these ample opportunities, there are also some challenges that threaten to offset this huge opportunity for Indian IT. Next three pages talk about the same.
5. Challenge 1: Chinese monopoly-So far China is the biggest offshoring partner for Japan, accounting for over 50 per cent of the total offshoring. Cultural homogeneity is the single biggest factor for choice of China as preferred offshoring partner. Services offshored to China are low-end IT services of coding, testing and BPO. However lately, there have been concerns over offshoring to China due to its limited capabilities to manage large complex projects, lack of high-end domain and technical expertise, inadequate data privacy and IP protection and high-attrition rate
6. Challenge 2: Oligopoly culture-The Japanese IT service provider industry is organised based on the Keiretsu model where the supply chain is vertically integrated with interlocking business relationships and shareholdings. There is oligopolistic control on clients and most clients do not have a credible alternative. Also, incumbent IT services hierarchy offers little incentive for Indian IT companies keen on working at high-end technology levels.
7. Challenge 3: IT regarded cost centre-Another challenge is the general perspective towards technology spending. IT is often viewed as a cost centre and not as a strategic enabler by Japanese companies. In fact, there is almost no concept of the CIO office. There are also high barriers to entry in terms of language and cultural compatibility. Having served global clients, most Indian IT companies struggle to cope with the immature IT project management practices followed in Japan.

So the opportunities and the competition are going hand in hand. Now the Indian IT players can be the winner of the race if they can provide the best of the product in the minimum price with the superb value additional features. They also need to do the business after a deep and through understanding of the Japanese culture...

Premji's Seven mantras against slowdown

As we all know that the entire world is going through a tough time of crisis, and hence the affects may appear on the Individuals working nature as their motivation level may go down. Now comes the role of mentor or the eldest of the family to guide and to give a positive ray to the family members so as to let them ride the wave ahead. The same happened in Wipro, the Chairman Mr Azim Premji send a message to all the Wiproites in the form of 7 mantras against the slowdown. Here are seven things Premji suggests to his 95,000 employees to weather the tough times.

1. Right time to invest in opportunities-The best time to invest is always when things are at rock bottom. Look for opportunities in markets like India and Middle East.
2. Maximum opportunities abound in such times-Paraphrasing Charles Dickens he says, "in the winter of despair, lies the spring of hope."
3. Maximize usage of assets-"Make assets go as far as they can by increasing their use."
4. Cut down discretionary expense-"To make assets go as far as they can by increasing their use," and critically, "cut down discretionary expense."
5. Be absolutely customer centric-"We must have a clear solution that will help our customer's business in these troubled times, so Wipro can be seen as a partner of choice compared to our competition."
6. Squeeze out every ounce of productivity- it's time for employees to adopt multi-tasking approach and maximize productivity.
7. Manage risks-Given that global slowdown is a reality with recession looming large, it is time to hedge risks. Especially in the scenario in which US -- reeling under a financial crisis, is IT companies’ biggest market.

So, we can see that the leaders and elders of family are guiding with a lot motivation and positive insight to lead them.