The Cyberabad Times

Multi-national software giant, Oracle Corporation's Hyderabad campus was on Monday inaugurated by the Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister, Mr Y S Rajasekhara Reddy at the Hitec city in a bid to "leverage the 24-hour clock."

Speaking on the occasion, Dr Reddy assured the captains of the industry and trade that his Government would provide the infrastructure, including power, water and road. He also referred to the Government's ambitious plan to develop an eight-lane super hi ghway (outer ring road) around the city.

The inauguration of the Centre bore a testimony to India being an important market for Oracle Corporation, its senior Vice-President, Mr John Wookey said here.

"India with its largest pool of engineering talent, is one of the two jewels for Oracle in the Asia-Pacific region and a very important market for Oracle both in terms of business opportunity as well as talent pool available for development of products," he said.

Indian domestic software market, which was in the tenth position in the Asia-Pacific region had witnessed a steep growth curve to reach the fourth position with a business of $7 billion and was all set to stabilise in the third position after Japan ($20 billion) and China, overtaking Korea in the region.

Operating as part of the global development organisation, the Hyderabad Centre, "leveraging on the 24-hour cloak," would build and expand the capabilities of Oracle's business applications software for the global market in close coordination with the Cal ifornia-based Global software development team, Oracle India (Applications Development) Vice-President, Mr Murali Subramaniam explained.

India accounted for Oracle's largest research and development Investment outside the United States.

Symphony changes name

Symphony Data Pvt Ltd, the Indian arm of the US-based STI Knowledge, on Monday announced that it has now come under the umbrella of its mother company and will be called as Integreo India Pvt Limited.

The name change is in line with the change of name of the parent company from STI Knowledge to Integreo.

Integreo's India operations in Hyderabad are headed by Mr Sandeep Madan, formerly Satyam-Nipuna's COO, prior to joining Integreo in June, the company said in a statement here.

Virinchi buys KSoft for $2.66 m

In a stock-cash deal, the Hyderabad-based Virinchi Technologies Ltd (VTL) has acquired the US-based KSoft Systems Inc, for a total consideration of $2.66 million. As part of the deal, $1.2 million will be paid in cash in three installments.

Of the total, half the amount will be paid after obtaining the regulatory approvals and the remaining will be paid in two trances - 180 days and 540 days - from the date of acquisition. The remaining $1.46 million will be in the form of preferential allotment of shares as per the Sebi norms, the company said.

Match making a quality business

Match-making services now come with a quality tag. Kaakateeya Marriages Private Limited, a city-based marriage bureau has got an international quality standard certification ISO 9001:2000. Incidentally, it is the only match-making company in India to have been given this certification.

According to Yalamanchi Chiranjeevi, managing director of Kaakateeya Marriages Private Limited, an international agency ICL Certification Limited awarded this certificate “for implementing standard systems, quality services and maintaining records as an objective evidence of implementation of systems.”

The audit was carried out in the areas of management, commitment, planning, responsibility, quality of human resources, infrastructure, work environment, etc.

Established in 1981, Kaakateeya today has 25 branches with 300 employees. Its branches are spread over Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka and Tamil Nadu. It has a database of over 70,000 people with it and its Hyderabad branch alone has 20,000 registrations.

Around 90 per cent of the 600-odd match-making services in Hyderabad and Secunderabad and 2,000-odd in Andhra Pradesh operate from home. Chiranjeevi, therefore, appealed to the state government to introduce match-making as self-employment training.

Incidentally, many private institutions have already started offering diploma in wedding management and wedding planner courses today, a press release said. However, with the growing size of the industry, universities may also start offering courses in wedding management and match-making.

The Indian wedding market is estimated to be worth Rs 50,000 crore, while the Andhra Pradesh market has been put at Rs 8,000 crore.

In the twin cities alone, according to Solus Wedding Guide, nearly three lakh arranged marriages take place in a year (excluding registered marriages and marriages held at religious places). Besides, families in the twin cities spend around Rs 2,000 crore per annum on wedding jewellery alone.

DLF enters Hyderabad

DLF Universal Limited, a New Delhi-based real estate developer, has announced its plans to enter the Hyderabad market. DLF has bought over 25 acres of land for developing facilities in Gachibowli at Cyberabad.

This is DLF’s first project in the southern region and will be followed by projects in other cities in south India, including Bangalore and Chennai, a press release said.

According to the official spokesperson of DLF Universal Limited, “We have entered Chandigarh and Kolkata with our IT parks and have acquired land in Mumbai, Chennai, Hyderabad and Bangalore. We will be setting up multi-utility retail outlets, premium residential complexes as well as commercial workplaces in these cities depending upon the commercial feasibility of the land bought in these areas.”

Asian Badminton in Hyderabad

It will be a new role for former All England Champion Pullela Gopichand who dons the mantle of Tournament Director for the Asian Badminton Championships 2005 beginning here next month. It has been almost an year since Gopichand competed in a professional singles event, and although he has yet to officially announce his retirement, his new avatar is a pointer to the direction he might be taking soon.

"I will be involved in promoting the game and in organisational matters," Gopichand told reporters today at the Gachibowli Stadium, the venue of the USD 125,000 (approx Rs. 53.75 lakh) prize money event from Sep 6 to 11. It must be a big disappointment for the local crowd that Gopichand did not qualify for an event happening is his own backyard.

In fact, Gopichand has in recent times been spending more time in setting up an academy at Gachibwoli than honing his skills on the court.

Prominent among the top players to take part in the event are former All England champion Hashim Muhdii of Malyasia, twice Asian champion Sony Dwi Kuncora of Indonesia and Athens Olympics semi-finalist Boonsak Pnsana besides Lee Hyin Il of Korea and Ng Wei of Hong Kong, president of AP Badminton Association K Durga Prasad said.

The Chinese team is yet to be confirmed and the event begins after formal inauguration the previous day.

Valuemart acquires Tejas Infoscripts

Bangalore-based software development and BPO company, Valuemart Info Technologies Limited, formerly known as GDR Software Ltd., has announced the acquisition of a 74-per cent stake in Tejas Infoscripts Pvt. Ltd. Also a Bangalore-based BPO. Post acquisition, Tejas will be a subsidiary of Valuemart.

"The acquisition will give us a headstart in the fast growing Legal BPO segment" said Valuemart's director, C K Vasudevan.

Tejas Infoscripts' BPO operations are focused on the legal domain helping overseas law firms to increase their service value by freeing up attorney-time. Tejas provides outsourced work in back office transactions, data management, e-filing and research activities.

Tejas currently employs 50 people and is poised to grow to 150 people by March 2006.

Says T Mahesh, CEO of Tejas, "The acquisition will infuse fresh funds into Tejas to ramp up its present capacity and acquire new business."

Valuemart is offering IT solutions using new generation patent-pending technologies such as BPM, software application specification and RFID. It is also building a contemporary service platform for BPO services for banking, financial services and insurance verticals.

The equity shares of Valuemart are listed at the BSE and at the Bangalore stock exchange and Hyderabad stock exchange.

2008 : Hyderabad a gateway

It's official now. Flights will start taking off from the new international airport coming up Shamshabad in the first quarter of 2008. The civil works for the project will start from September 1, 2005. The Rs 1,760-crore project has achieved financial closure on Monday with eight institutions committing to provide funding support to the project in addition to the government and promoters.

Of the total project outlay, Rs 378 crore is the equity part to be jointly held by GMR Infrastructure Ltd 63per cent ), Malaysia Airport Holdings (11per cent ), Airports Authority of India (13per cent ) and the government of Andhra Pradesh (13per cent ).

The promoters are raising Rs 960 crore debt while the state government is offering Rs 315 crore interestfree loan and Rs 107 crore as grant. The lenders' consortium is being led by the Infrastructure Development offering Rs 200-crore loan.

The other institutions in the consortium are: Allahabad Bank (Rs 120 crore), Bank of Baroda (Rs 110 crore), Canara Bank (Rs 100 crore), IDBI (Rs 100 crore), Oriental Bank of Commerce (Rs 110 crore), State Bank of Hyderabad (Rs 120 crore) and Vijaya Bank (Rs 100 crore).

The institutions are lending the fund at an average interest rate of 8 per cent. "We will start repaying the loans after about five years. There is a moratorium on repayments for two years. The total tenure of repayments Hyderabad International Airport Ltd (HIAL) managing director Kiran Kumar Grandhi told reporters. The company will repay the interestfree government loan after 15 years in five annual instalments.

The project will come up in 5,500 acres. However, in the first phase, the company will use 2,000 acres. "We are creating facilities to handle about 7 million passengers.

But, there are enough scaling up options to handle up to 40 million passengers," Grandhi said. With the revenue expected including aeronautical fees and shopping and recreation facilities, the company is expecting to break even in eight to ten years.

In addition to developing National Highway 7 (the Bangalore road) and Srisailam State Highway, the company is also planning to work on an elevated expressway in association with the state government to cut down on the time to reach the airport. The project site is located about 25 kms from Hyderabad.

Though in a phased manner, the new airport would have 60 check-in counters with common user terminal equipment and eight self check-in kiosks. It will also have 18 immigration counters.

For airlines, the airport will have Code-F facility helping to operate even an A-380. In addition, it would have 30 aircraft parking stands including passenger boarding bridges. A fuel farm and aviation fuel hydrant are also expected to help facilitate easy airline operation.

Source : Times of India

TCS eyeing life sciences sector

India’s largest software services company Tata Consultancy Services Limited (TCS) is eyeing the growing opportunity in life sciences area, particularly focusing on drug discovery related technology and custom software development for diagnostics.

The Executive Vice-President of TCS and Head of Advanced Technology Center, Dr M. Vidyasagar said that large diagnostic solutions providers are seeking ways to simplify their analytics processes and make their task of interpreting data easier.

This can be best addressed by custom-developed software that pro-actively detects problem areas and suggests them how to go about.

Dr Vidyasagar, refraining from naming companies that would be interested in such solutions, said that there is a large market out there.

"We are in parleys with some diagnostics companies that require technology to streamline their diagnostic process."

Search for Intelligent software ends here

Imagine yourself at an ATM counter where you wish to withdraw half the money in your account. So first you check the balance, calculate its half and then enter the right amount. Imagine if you could simply ask the machine to withdraw half the money in your account. Picture this. You're a US citizen who wants to visit Kerala and wish to know how many airlines from the US travel to Kerala per week.

So naturally you would head for the internet and run a search, "How many airlines from the US travel to Kerala per week," and expect a decent answer, right? Not always.

What often happens is that the search engine blindly lists all resources with "Kerala" and "airlines" in its database.

To address this problem a a Hyderabad-based software, TrulyIntelligent Technologies has developed a search software that can understand the linguistic component of a search query, which makes it more sensitive to what the user wants.

The company is already in talks with corporations across all industries for the deployment of the software. The software has been named Lilo-after the alien in in the movie The Fifth Element.

"Lilo has immense potential. For instance, it can also be used at airports for passenger help. So if the passenger wants to know where a specific counter is, he can just type in the question and get the answer," said Ayyappa Nagubandi, a team leader at TrulyIntelligent Technologies said.

"We are in talks with a bank that is keen on deploying Lilo on its ATMs and for its online banking, and are optimistic about closing this deal soon," he adds.

TrulyIntelligent is also in talks with the Kerala and Andhra Pradesh governments to for developing their tourism websites and promotional CDs based on the software.

The company is also likely to close a deal with a telecom service provider for enabling more effective interaction between the users and the company. Which could result in more effective and better customer service.

For example the user sends and SMS wanting to know the list of all the calls made out of his mobile in the last 5 days, the company could promptly send him back an SMS with a list of calls made, a service which is not available anywhere in the world.

Ask him about how much this patented software would cost the end-user and he shrugs, "We will be supplying the software to companies keen on large-scale deployment. Its cost to the end-user depends on what the company will charge."

Incidentally, TrulyIntelligent is also planning to make this software voice-enabled as right now it is just text-to-text.

"We are still working on enabling the voice component and hope to have a breakthrough soon," he said.

Source : Business Standard

Jet Airways eyes more routes

JET Airways (India) Ltd plans to link Kuala Lumpur with more Indian cities like Mumbai, Delhi, Kolkata, Bangalore and Hyderabad, subject to government approval.

The Indian private carrier currently operates a daily service between Kuala Lumpur and Chennai, using a Boeing 737-800.

Jet Airways vice-president for Asia-Pacific V. Raja said the carrier is toying with the idea of flying to more Indian destinations from Kuala Lumpur, but added that it won’t be soon as it needs to secure the traffic rights to these new destinations.

MCH may speed up road widening

Unfazed by criticism over the perceived delay in its road widening exercise, the Municipal Corporation of Hyderabad (MCH) expects to increase the pace having obtained the Government's nod for allowing Transfer of Development Rights (TDR) for the entire city.

TDR was initially made applicable only for the recently widened Raj Bhavan to Somajiguda road but with most of the affected properties having obtained by consent, the incentive was not put to much use. Now with more road stretches likely to be widened in the coming days, the MCH expects TDR facility to quicken the process of acquiring properties to be affected. Under TDR, owners can transfer the additional floor space index they are entitled to whenever their property gets cut to another place and another property too.

Road widening is on currently on at Charminar-Falaknuma, S.P. Road, Somajiguda to Begumpet airport and Himayatnagar. The MCH has prepared a blueprint for widening as in obtaining consents, clearing compensations and acquisitions before constructing compound walls on the sides, clearing electric poles, pipelines, etc., and then only carpeting the road.

"Widening roads alone will not solve traffic congestion problem, rather strict regulation and inculcating a proper traffic culture is imperative. We are working with the traffic police to find some solutions," says Mr. Jaju. Among them are to put a total ban on roadside parking on the widened roads.

Source: The Hindu

The New Hot Spots

Below are the new hotspots in Hyderabad making News, LandSat Image Courtesy NASA World Wind

Click on the image to see larger version

Cyberabad
Latitude 17.46804
Longitude 78.37621

Vattinagulapalli
Latitude 17.41342N
Longitude 78.30800E

Shamshabad
Latitude 17.26597N
Longitude 78.39883E

Chilkur
Latitude 17.34839
Longitude 78.29298

More maps coming in new maps section.

NIIT, Intel tie-up to train pros

IT training firm NIIT Ltd on Thursday announced a technology tie-up with chipmaker Intel to train 50,000 software professionals in India over the next three years on the Intel architectural platform.

The two firms will jointly develop training programmes, which will be based on Intel Software College and the offerings would be scaled out through the NIIT network.

In the first year, the programmes will train 6,000 to 8,000 people ranging from top decision-makers to working professionals. "It will be scaled up to 50,000 over three years," NIIT Ltd Chairman, Mr Rajendra Pawar said here.

"Based on our early experience in India, we will remodel and roll out the programme in other parts of Asia Pacific, where China is an important market for us," he added.

The programme for China will be finalised in a few months, Mr Pawar said.

In India, the programme will initially focus on multi-core processing with labs across 10 NIIT centres in Delhi, Mumbai, Bangalore, Chennai, Hyderabad and Pune.

Intel India President Mr Ketan Sampat said, "Our collaboration with NIIT on this initiative will help Indian software developers and architects capitalise on today's technology trends and deliver new products to their customers."

Museum Library to be digitized

It will be possible soon to access the rich collection of the library of India’s famous Salar Jung Museum, from the comfort of one’s drawing room. This has become possible with the project of converting all the museum’s books into digital format.

Six scanners and twenty computers have been installed to store the pages in digital format.

The museum has over 40,000 printed books in English, 900 each in Hindi and Telugu, 11000 in Urdu, 3,400 in Persian, 2300 in Arabic and 160 in Turkish. Besides, it has about 9000 manuscripts.

D. Raj Reddy, chairman IIT, formally inaugurated the project on 12 January. This is a part of the Digital Library of India project to digitize one million books by 2007. The project is in collaboration with Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh. One million books in Indian language would be put on the web so that these may be accessed by anyone, anywhere,

It would take at least one and a half-years to digitize all the museum books. About 60 to 100 books would be scanned daily. Not just books, even art objects in the museum would be digitized. "Anyone will be able to take a virtual tour of the museum," Dr. Raj Reddy said.

Meanwhile, the museum authorities are seriously considering allowing visitors to carry cameras inside the museum. This follows the decision already taken by the the New Delhi-based National Museum to allow visitors to photograph the exhibits. The Salar Jung Museum will, however, place the proposal before the museum board. AP Governor Sushil Kumar Shinde, who is the Board’s ex-officio chairman, will have to take a decision and it will be forwarded to the Union Ministry of Culture.

The museum authorities are by and large in favour of allowing cameras into the museum as it would fulfill a long demand besides adding to the revenue of the museum. About 5000 persons on an average visit the museum daily and during holidays this figure crosses 10000. Visitors from all over the world come here and feel deprived when they are not allowed to carry cameras inside.

However, it is feared that too much use of camera flash light could prove hazardous to paintings and miniatures. But there would be no problem with other objects. From security point of view too there would be no problems.

Softbank buys VisualSoft

VisualSoft Technologies Ltd. said on Wednesday that Japan's Softbank Corp. had bought a 14 percent stake in the software company for about 355 million rupees ($8.2 million). Shares in VisualSoft, which makes software tools and offers services, rose as much as 7.7 percent to 167 rupees on the news.

"We do anticipate a business relationship," Chief Financial Officer V. Krishnan told Reuters from the southern Indian city of Hyderabad, where his company is based.

He said this would mean a customer relationship directly with Softbank or through its help, but gave no details.

VisualSoft told the stock exchange that SAIF II Mauritius Co. Ltd., an offshore arm of the Japanese group that specialises in technology and Internet investments, acquired nearly 2.8 million shares of the company at 127 rupees a share.

Softbank could increase its holding, Krishnan said in response to a question, but added there was no immediate proposal.

L&T and CSCEHK bag contracts

MAKING headway in the international airport project, the Hyderabad International Airport Ltd (HIAL) has awarded two major works contracts to Larsen &Toubro and Hong Kong-based China State Construction Engineering (Hong Kong) Ltd (CSCEHK) totalling Rs 1,110 crore.

While the Indian construction major won the Rs 495-crore ALS (Airside and Landside) works contract, CSCEHK bagged PTB (Passenger Terminal Building) works contract worth Rs 615 crore.

The contract, signed by L&T and Hyderabad International Airport Ltd (HIAL), envisages project completion in 30 months, a news release from L&T said. The airport is expected to be open to traffic by 2008.

L&T will construct the runway, taxiway and aprons to accommodate wide-body planes, including new generation aircraft, such as the A380. L&T will also build the cargo terminal building, ground handling workshops and other buildings. The contract also covers development of airfield ground lighting system and fire station, installation of the aviation hydrant system and the security perimeter.

The Hong Kong company would construct the fully operational terminal building area of over one lakh sq. metres. This would include building structure, information technology and security systems and ATC tower with adjacent technical building.

The two contracts would be executed in 30 months, including a three-month airport operational trial period, a GMR release said. The HIAL hopes to achieve the financial closure by this month-end and make the airport operational by 2008.

The GMR group holds a majority stake (63 per cent) in the Rs 1,418-crore HIAL project. The other stakeholders are Malaysia Airports Holdings Berhad (11 per cent), Government of Andhra Pradesh (13 per cent) and Airports Authority of India (13 per cent).

The company release said that the two companies were selected following an international competitive tender bidding that attracted 35 companies from 12 countries. Of these, seven tenders were qualified for ALS works and six for PTB works.

"After an intensive tender period the contracts were awarded to the two companies in the two categories," it said.

CSCEHK is a wholly-owned subsidiary of China State Construction International Holdings Ltd, the flagship construction company of the China State Construction Engineering Corporation.

On awarding the contract to CSCEHK, the company said it had completed more than 500 projects, including Hong Kong International Airport and airports at Hainan, Guilin and Xiamen in China.

Fund crunch hits Zoological Park

Empty coffers have left the Nehru Zoological Park in a position where it cannot pay personnel expected to maintain the premises and more importantly, guard the precious collection from the wild.

Such is the unprecedented fund crunch that security personnel working on a contract basis here have not been paid their salaries since April. Similar is the fate of contract workers maintaining different sections of the sprawling zoo and manning the main entrance.

Officials say their pleas for release of funds to the tune of Rs. 5.34 crores has remained stuck with the Government for several months forcing the zoo functioning into rather `adverse' conditions. "The proposals are getting tossed from one department to another and things are getting worse at the zoo," quips an official.

Monthly expenditure towards feed for the animals is around Rs. 8 lakhs, which is taken care of since it is provided under non-plan.

The zoo, a popular picnic spot, earns more than Rs. 3 crores per annum through gate collection. Senior officials point out that the Government had sanctioned Rs. 6.50 crores for zoos in the State. Part of this was meant for the city zoo.

Vivmed Lab makes debut on BSE

Hyderabad-based Vivimed Labs Ltd made an impressive debut on the Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE) this morning as it got listed at Rs 115 and immediately moved up to Rs 160 and later went past Rs 200-level in the first 90 minutes of trading.

The issue was earlier oversubscribed 30 times and the company has impressive records of steady growth in the past.

Vivimed is a speciality chemical company engaged in cosmetic raw material production and is in this business for the last 13-14 years.

It has been a supplier of raw material to major cosmetic companies in the world, and is one of its kind in the business.

Vivimed Lab has a modern research and development centre engaged in creation of new molecules.

The company has a very professional approach to a lot of issues unheard of small companies in the same categories, said K Srinivas, of UTI Securities, the lead managers to the Vivimed Lab's IPO.

Happy 59th India

Who murdered Rithika?

City Administration? School Administration? Hyderabad citizens Traffic sense? The blame game flares up again.

To the administrators of Hyderabad street accident tolls used to be mere statistics in police files. Five-year-old N. Rithika may have changed that.

The kindergarten pupil of St Ann’s was mowed down by a DCM Toyota as she stepped out of school on Thursday. Her funeral yesterday sparked city-wide calls for road safety and seemed to have shaken the government awake.

"The lives of children are precious. No one involved in the accident will be spared," chief minister Y.S. Rajasekhar Reddy told a city where four schoolchildren died on the roads this week.

Reddy had held an emergency meeting on the issue immediately after he returned from Chennai this morning.

"I have already pulled up the police and municipal administration. I told them they must ensure that such accidents do not happen again,” he said. “What we want to do now is take measures that will help make Hyderabad a city everyone would love to live in."

The chief minister blamed the state's burgeoning car and two-wheeler traffic for the lack of safety on the roads. "Cars and scooters increased five times in the last three years."

The government has already slapped a notice on St Ann’s, holding the school responsible for Rithika's death. District collector Aravind Kumar said that under the Indian Penal Code, a school has to ensure safe transport for its pupils.

The school management, however, refuses to accept blame. “We are not responsible for anything that happens outside our compound,” said the principal, Sister Anthoniamma.

The state human rights commission, too, has issued notices to the school, the police and civic officials, asking them to appear before it on August 19. The commission’s chairman, Justice (retd) B. Subhashan Reddy, said a suo motu case has been registered.

Groups of municipal and police officials travelled from school to school today, inspecting transport arrangements and the approach from the gates to the main roads.

They found that hardly a tenth of the 5,500 schools in the city and its neighbourhood, which teach nearly 20 lakh children, have done anything to ensure safe travel for its students.

Intel VP in Hyderabad

Arvind Sodhani, senior vice-president of Intel Corporation and president of Intel Capital, the company’s strategic investment arm that directs the company’s external investments, mergers and acquisitions, is in Hyderabad.

Though the purpose of his visit is not immediately known, Arvind is said to have visited a few places including the Indian School of Business (ISB) besides meeting a couple of big names in the IT industry based out of Hyderbad.

According to sources, representatives of the state government also met him on Thursday night to impress upon him to consider Hyderabad as a possible location for Intel’s proposed Fab Testing facility project.

As recent reports suggest, Union IT Minister Kalanidhi Maran is keen to bring this project to his home state, Tamil Nadu, even as the company is said to be still in the process of evaluating the places.

Though Intel has a big chip design wing located in Bangalore, the company is looking for other places other than the IT capital of India on account of infrastructural bottlenecks being faced by the city.

The state government is trying to include Hyderabad on the list of possible locations for setting up of Intel testing facility for quite sometime but so far has met with little success.

A high-level team from the state, which recently toured United States to meet big companies to invite them to Andhra Pradesh, had to cancel a meeting with Intel president following the advice of Indian ambassador who cited the company’s negotiations with the Government of India as the reason, according to officials.

Though officials are not very hopeful of Intel’s plans, Arvind's visit still assumes significance for other reasons too.

June Min, promoter of the proposed Fab facility in Hyderabad, is also in talks with Intel to join his project. This could also be one of the possible reasons for Arvind’s visit to Hyderabad. He is said to be accompanied by the company’s team.

Digital historical map of south

Five institutions and universities, led by the French Institute in Pondicherry, have joined hands to make a historical map of the southern Indian region in digital format, Indo-Asian News Service reported Saturday.

The map will contain information on settlements, kingdoms, religious, as well as cultural and linguistic influences on the region through history.

Their first work will start from Tamil Nadu Pradesh and Kerala in south India, which are well known for numbers of historic relics, and then Andra Pradesh and Karnataka in the second phrase.

A team has mapped the Pudukottai region of Tamil Nadu in a pilot study.

"The Pudukottai region pilot study has thrown open great potential for such a study. If the remaining parts of South India are mapped similarly, the atlas will serve as a launching pad for all future historical and cultural research in the region," said C. Subramanian, vice-chancellor of Tamil University, one of the five institutions.

The others in the project are the Mahatma Gandhi University, the Mangalore University and the Hyderabad University and French Institute in Pondicherry.

The database will be open to scholars and available on-line as well as in CDs.

Infosys puts Hyderabad in focus

Bangalore-based IT major Infosys Technologies Limited has put Hyderabad on the front burner of its expansion strategy. The $1.59 billion company is looking at expanding and may set up a new centre in the city spanning 150-300 acres in size in the future.

Addressing mediapersons at the Infosys' Hyderabad Development Centre (DC), N R Narayana Murthy, chief mentor and chairman of Infosys, said, "The Hyderabad DC has over 4,000 employees and we have the capacity to add 4,000-5,000 more people within the next 18-24 months."

On being asked whether they were looking at setting up a 100-acre campus in the city, Murthy said that to grow by 30 per cent this year, they will have to expand with regard to people and facilities.

“However, at this stage, if we look at setting up a campus, it will be of 150-300 acres in size,” he said, adding that they have had discussions with Andhra Pradesh chief minister Y S Rajasekhara Reddy. "Bangalore will, however, continue to receive attention as well," Murthy said.

Infosys has an office space of seven million sq ft today and will be adding another two million-three million sq ft in the next year. The 40,000-strong company plans to recruit around 16,000 people this year.

The company has been growing at a fast clip though inorganic growth has not been a major driver in this regard. However, when questioned about the company’s acquisition strategy, Murthy said, "We will certainly look at acquisitions of companies that are complementary to us, have similar value systems and leverage our competencies."

Next gen supercomputers

The Centre for Development of Advanced Computing (C-DAC) is working on the next generation of supercomputers, which work on a speed of up to 10 Teraflops as aginst one Teraflop now.

With such processing speed, the supercomputers will enable weather-monitoring centres to track atmospheric changes better and possibly include tsunami-warning systems. Experts, in turn, can cut short processing speeds and increase the features of data analysis. The centre has sewn up plans to further expand the scope of the public-private participatory mode for grid computing, which it has initiated through the Garuda project. The Garuda project, which networks about 50 institutions and agencies across 17 centres, is set for completion later this year.

C-Dac had embarked on the next level of computational processing - - grid computing. From simple parallel processing, this would enable an expert to track information from anywhere at any time, as if it were a single entity, even though these companies or institutions may be spread all over.

Lately, the challenge is not so much of developing new capabilities and higher processing speeds, but of changing the mindset to leverage such computing capabilities. Often, companies are not willing to share information. But with restricted access to information, one can allow limited access and yet take advantage of the grid computers spread in a distributed environment. This project is expected to be completed by the year-end and would have 100 mb per second link and its backbone would be able to support a peak demand of 2.48 Giga bits per second.

With an increasing focus on open source, C-DAC is setting up a national resource centre for free/open source. With the support of the Department of Information Technology, the Department of Science and Technology and the Council for Scientific an Industrial Research, and industry players, the effort is directed now to broad basing the concept and spreading technologies developed by C-Dac. While this is at the enterprise level, a lot of effort is directed towards a language interface to popularise the use of computers in local languages.

New IT corridor coming up

An information technology knowledge corridor will be set up in Hyderabad by acquiring 20,000 acres from 32 villages around the city. Hardware parks would also be set up by acquiring 5,000 acres near Hyderabad, said Mines and Geology Minister and District Incharge Minister P Sabitha Indra Reddy.

She told reporters here on Sunday that the Government was committed to the development of IT in Tirupati, Vijayawada, Visakhapatnam, Warangal and Kakinada. She said already two companies had come forward to establish IT companies at Tirupati and a Non-Resident Indian was keen to set up an IT company at Warangal.

She said 15 companies including Satyam Computers were allotted sites at Visakhapatnam. Chief Minister YS Rajasekhara Reddy would review the issue of setting up IT industries in the State on August 8.

The Minister said she would organise fortnightly teleconferences with district officials to monitor the implementation of government schemes and for improving the skills of the officials.

She said one-lakh acres would be distributed to the poor on August 21 at a meeting expected to be attended by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh in Hyderabad.

DNA database of criminals

India may soon have a legal framework in place for creating a DNA fingerprinting database of convicts. A draft DNA profiling bill, providing for the creation of such a database and its admissibility in courts as evidence, is ready and likely to be tabled in parliament this year.

The Hyderabad-based Centre for DNA Fingerprinting and Diagnostics (CDFD), the pioneer in DNA fingerprinting and diagnostics in the country, and the National Academy of Legal Studies and Research (Nalsar), Hyderabad, have prepared the draft of the bill.

"The draft is ready and I hope the bill will be tabled in parliament this year," said Seyed Ehtesham Hasnain, director of CDFD and member-secretary of the DNA Profiling Advisory Council.

The first draft of the bill is being circulated among ministries of law, home affairs and science. The final draft will be presented to the cabinet before it is tabled in the parliament. With more than a dozen state forensic laboratories handling DNA fingerprinting cases and private laboratories too entering the field, the bill also provides for quality control and quality assurance.

"The bill will allow us to store, retrieve and use a DNA fingerprinting database of convicts and criminals. It is the need of the hour because the finality of court judgments pertaining to criminal cases is being questioned," said Hasnain.

He said over 100 cases were reopened in various countries, including the US, after final judgments were delivered with regard to convictions.

"In many of these cases, the persons who were convicted were found to be innocent based on DNA profiling," he said.

Such a database proved highly useful and effective in the criminal investigation and justice delivery system in countries, including New Zealand. "The rate of conviction has gone up significantly wherever DNA fingerprinting has been taken as evidence in the court," he said.

Currently, DNA test findings are presented as expert evidence under the Indian Evidence Act, but have no statutory recognition.

"The witnesses may turn hostile and other circumstantial evidences can be manipulated, but the DNA does not lie," said Hasnain.

CDFD, a premier research institute under the Department of Biotechnology, ministry of science and technology, has helped the Central Bureau of Investigations (CBI) and other investigating authorities in several high profile cases like assassination of former prime minister Rajiv Gandhi and former chief minister of Punjab Beant Singh and the murder of poetess Madhumita Shukla.

Developed by Sir Alec Jeffreys, a professor at the University of Leicester in the UK in 1984, DNA fingerprinting helps law enforcement agencies or courts to determine an individual's involvement in a crime or settle a dispute over paternity.

While the DNA's chemical structure is the same in all human beings, there is a recognisable difference in the order in which the millions of base pairs found in each person's DNA is arranged. It is this difference that is captured by DNA fingerprinting.

Every person leaves traces of his DNA. It is the gathering of these traces at a scene of offence that helps investigators in identifying the criminal.

City made Electric bike

A CITY-based company has developed an electric bicycle that makes no noise or emits pollutants. It will be the most economical two-wheeler, costing just 30 paise for every kilometre. "It is as simple as switching on a bulb," said Mr M. Venkataiah, Chairman of Cynosure Enterprises Ltd.

"But for the two wheels, nothing moves in it. Because there is no internal combustion activity, there is absolutely no noise," he said on the technology. Built on indigenous technology, the manufacturers are planning to commence sales in October.

The bike offers 60 km of non-stop drive on a fully charged battery at speeds in the range of 25-30 km. Showcasing the first batch of "e-bikes" here on Sunday, Mr Mandali S. Rao, Director of Cynosure Enterprises Ltd, said the bike offered several other economic benefits. "It won't come under the Motor Vehicles Act and hence there is no need to pay road tax," he said.

Declining to announce the price pattern, he said that it would cost much less than the scooterettes. The 'Yash' series of bikes would have five variants — Pretty (180 watts), Docile (240W), Acute (350W and 600W) and Whiz (600W), catering to all segments of customers.

Initially, each of these would be available in three colours. In the first phase, the company would sell the bikes in Andhra Pradesh before expanding to other States.

"Battery-run two-wheelers are quite popular in Japan and Korea," he said.

The company would invest Rs 5 crore and hoped to manufacture 1,500-2,000 bikes a month. "We are going to appoint 100 dealerships next month. We plan to start sales beginning the Vijayadasami festival," he said. Mr M. Venkataiah, who is also the Director (Technical) of Force Motors (formerly Bajaj Tempo Ltd), said the company would be setting up energy points to help customers.

Lufthansa to set up catering unit

German national carrier Lufthansa would open its Sky Chef flight catering facility in Hyderabad and construction had already started for this purpose, said Werner Heesen, director (South Asia), here on Saturday.

However, Heesen expressed his inability to share details about the investment and capacity (meals per day). Lufthansa, at present, has a catering facility in Bangalore.

This apart, the German carrier is looking forward to enhancing presence in cargo, IT business and catering. Moreover, considering the enormous growth in the Indian aviation sector, Lufthansa eyes areas like maintenance and even pilot training.

Ramoji Film City is world's largest

Ramoji Film City (RFC) near here has created a Guinness record as the world's largest film studio complex, beating Hollywood in the process.

"The largest film studio complex in the world is Ramoji Film City in Hyderabad, India, which opened in 1996 and measures 674 hectares (1,666 acres) with 47 sound stages," said the certificate received by RFC.

"This recognition by Guinness is a tribute to the glory of Indian cinema," said RFC's managing director A. Ramamohana Rao

Located about 25 km from Hyderabad, RFC offers over 500 locations. Twenty international films and nearly 40 Indian films can be produced simultaneously in the complex.

Built by media baron Ramoji Rao, RFC is considered the only facility where a filmmaker can walk in with a script and walk out with a canned film. It has attracted not only filmmakers from southern India and Bollywood but also producers from Hollywood. Several television serials, advertising films and music videos are also being shot at picturesque locations there.

India is the world's largest filmmaker with nearly 900 films being produced in the country annually.

Bioinformatics centre in AP

President A.P.J Abdul Kalam will Friday inaugurate the world's first state-of-the-art centre of excellence in medical bioinformatics here. Jointly established and managed by the Centre for DNA Fingerprinting and Diagnostics (CDFD) and Sun Microsystems Inc, the centre will carry out advanced research in bioinformatics.

It will develop genetic data and focus on drug discovery and gene therapy related research using a network of computers in a grid system. While CDFD has brought its expertise in bioinformatics, Sun has chipped in with its expertise in high performance computing.

The centre will also serve as a national node for Asia-Pacific Bioinformatics Network (APBioNet) to promote bioinformatics education with connectivity to similar centres of excellence across the globe. In this $5 million collaborative initiative, Sun Microsystems is investing $4 million and the remainder is to be provided by CDFD and the Andhra Pradesh government.

CDFD director Syed Hasnain told a news conference that the centre would create a database on infectious diseases and genetic disorders with focus on tuberculosis, the synergy between tuberculosis and HIV/AIDS and gastric disorders.

He said TB was being given priority as India accounts for the highest number of deaths from the disease in the world. CDFD has already developed a database to help identify ancient forms of TB or modern day, more virulent forms.

The centre's location in India is also significant as it is the only country, apart from Brazil, which offers diverse genetic profiles. Eighty percent of genetic disorders in the world are found among poor people.

Describing the centre as a milestone in the history of eight-year-old CDFD, Hasnain said the agreement for it was signed by the Andhra Pradesh government and Sun Microsystems three years ago in the US.

The centre would also have a national telemedicine utility to network with hospitals and pharma companies to accelerate the process of drug discovery. It would network with 12 other centres of excellence in biology created by Sun all over the world.

Visaka Industries to focus on textiles

Visaka Industries, the asbestos and textiles major has announced major expansion plans with an investment of Rs228 crore which would be split between its building materials and textiles businesses. The plans are spread over three years.

Dr G Vivekanand, managing director Visaka Industries, addressing the press here said, the company would invest Rs55 crore in setting up a garments factory at the Mahindra International City in Chennai, Rs100 crore in a cotton spinning unit and Rs55 crore in a weaving unit. For the company's building materials business he announced an investment of Rs28 crore in setting up a unit in Rae Bareilly in Uttar Pradesh.

While the locations of the cotton spinning unit and weaving facility have not been finalised these are likely to come up either in Maharashtra or Andhra Pradesh, G Vivekanand said.

He said the company was reducing business dependence on building materials and was planning to become a major textile player with control over the entire chain of production.

To fund the expansion Visaka Industries is going in for issue of foreign currency convertible bonds (FCCBs) to raise $15 million (Rs65 crore) to part-finance the project. It has appointed Elara Capital of London to act as merchant bankers in charge of the issue.

The company would be listed on the London Stock Exchange after the process of raising funds was completed Dr Vivekanand said.

K V Soorianarayanan, senior vice-president, Visaka Industries, the conversion of FCCBs into equity shares would enable the company improve its borrowing capacity by another Rs70 crore. According to him the company enjoys a comfortable debt-equity ratio of 1:1.2, and would continue to maintain it even after raising debt for the proposed expansion.

SumTotal To Acquire Pathlore

SumTotal Systems Inc. (Nasdaq:SUMT) and Pathlore Software, two leading enterprise software companies in the learning and business performance management market, today announced the signing of a definitive agreement for SumTotal to acquire Pathlore for approximately $47 million. Pathlore shareholders will receive approximately $29 million in cash and 4 million shares of SumTotal Systems common stock. The merger reinforces the company’s position as the largest software provider in the emerging learning and performance management market and is expected to provide its collective customers even greater resources for support and product innovation.

According to industry analysts, the acquisition brings together the market share leader by revenue and the market share leader by customer count. The combination is expected to offer Pathlore customers access to SumTotal’s broader enterprise suite of product capabilities and expanded global support as well as extend SumTotal’s reach into key segments, including state government, health care, and the rapidly growing middle-market.

SumTotal Systems Inc. (NASDAQ: SUMT) is the largest provider of learning and business performance technologies, processes and services. Formed by the merger of industry pioneers Docent and Click2learn, the company is uniquely focused on helping organizations harness and manage mission-critical intellectual power to solve real-world business problems and produce significant bottom-line results. SumTotal has helped accelerate performance and profit for more than 675 of the world’s best-known companies and federal and local government agencies, including Microsoft, United Airlines, U.S. Army, Air Force, Navy and Coast Guard, Vodafone, Aetna, Accenture, Cendant, Harley-Davidson, Wyeth, Wachovia and D & B. SumTotal Systems is headquartered in Mountain View, Calif., with offices throughout the United States, as well as in London, Paris, Heidelberg, Sydney, Tokyo and Hyderabad, India.

Washed out!

I got mails from people asking me no that there are no updates on Cyberabad times. Well that is because nothing interesting happened in Hyderabad except for torrential rain which halted all economic activity.

It really amazes me that our cities have no infrastructure to handle any natural disaster. What is the relevance of development when we cant keep together what we already have. Mumbai our financial capital was literally washed out. The city that never stops has halted. Only reason improper drainage system, any coastal city is supposed to have very good drain system because you live next to a sea and potentially you can be porne to flooding. We need a total revamp of infrastructure across all metros, 1) To handle disasters like this, 2) To handle the exploding and expanding population and 3) handle traffic.

We Indians are so self centered that we just dont seem to care what happens to our cities, our boundries limit to our homes, we want all comforts, the latest cars, the dream house, but think... what good are all those if it gets drowned when there is a bit of more rain than usual. The best we are at doing is to point fingers at someone, when something like this happens. This event happened to wake us from a sleep, it washed our eyes from an illusion that all is fine. We are at a juncture of an economic revolution, if we want to reap the best of it we need to act now or we will loose big time. We require a change, a change of thinking at personal and a very fundamental level.

"Simply speaking lets lay the foundation first and then start building."

New Slip road proposed

Other than road widening and proposed flyovers in Begumpet, the Municipal Corporation of Hyderabad has come out with an alternative slip road to reduce the current heavy traffic load on the Begumet-Somajiguda-Khairatatabd stretch.

The road starting from Greenlands junction will connect to the Necklace road, covering a distance of up to 2.5 km. With a proposed width of 80 ft, it traverses through Kundanbagh and Ministers Quarters.

The Chief City Planner, B. Purushottama Reddy, said that the MCH Commissioner, Sanjay Jaju, has approved the road development plan and except for a few compound walls of Government buildings and a shed there was no need for demolitions as enough vacant space was available.

Senior officials including Roads & Building Secretary, Binoy Kumar and others had visited the area. The CCP said the department has been requested to give permission for the limited demolitions and estimates for the project too were being prepared. The slip road will join the existing road inside and it is being planned to go for a road under bridge at the railway line to connect to the Necklace road.

Subsequently, it can also be connected to the much-delayed Rs. 45 crore Fatehnagar slip road, which the MCH has been planning for a long time. As several properties are likely to get affected when the road construction is taken up, it has been put on the back burner for now.

International gems, jewellery expo

Hyderabad, famous the world over for its glittering pearls and placed strategically between Dubai, Hong Kong and Bangkok, the world jewellery trading hubs, will host the three-day 'Hyderabad International Gems and Jewellery Exposition 2005' from August 13.

More than 90 participants, including 40 jewellers from Jaipur are expected to participate in the three-day expo to be held at the HITEX exhibition centre. Being jointly organised by HITEX and Andhra Pradesh Gems and Jewellery Trading Federation and supported by Jaipur Jewellery show, the expo would showcase trendy designer collections of myriad hues along with traditional ones, be it gem-studded jewellery, finely crafted pieces of gemstones, gold, diamonds and pearls and the latest platinum collections.

Leading brands from Chennai, Mumbai and Delhi will also share the exhibition space with local players like Musaddilal Jewellers, Meena Jewellers, Tibarumal Jewellers, Totaram Papalal and Sons and Srinath Jewellers.

Special events like fashion shows with leading models, trade meets, presentations and seminars have also been planned.

Live Weather

Picture of the day

Market Watch

Horoscopes

Contact : Cyberabad Times

Disclaimer