November 2008 Archives

Is India still regarded as a safe place for offshore call centres and software development? Following the attacks in Mumbai today, which targetted UK and US citizens, the two biggest India stock markets have shut down. The Foreign Office has recommended people avoid travelling to India unless absolutely necessary.

A representative of leading Indian outsourcer, Tata Consulting Services, told Computer Weekly he has just cancelled his trip to Mumbai due to the attack.

What do you think? How safe is outsourcing to India, given the current climate.

And will you be cancelling your travel plans to India? If so let us know by adding a comment to this blog.

We have pulled together a Twitter feed for latest updates from Mumbai terrorist attacks - see below.

Warwick Ashford writes:

US media reports have jumped to the conclusion that SAP will be cutting software prices soon in an effort to attract and retain customers. They have made this leap based on comments by SAP's co-chief executive Leo Apotheker that SAP will work with customers to help them through the economic downturn.

This is in the DNA of SAP, which has put a lot of time and effort into developing closer relations with partners and customers, so I would say it is unlikely to result in software price cuts. Not on the official price tag, anyway, as most price cutting tends to be hidden in the details around software support, or so I am told.

SAP's announcement that it is to increase support costs from January provoked a negative response, but insiders say this pricing is one of the biggest bargaining chips used by software suppliers to win and retain customers. SAP has responded by demonstrating that it understands the importance of keeping end users on its side by agreeing to set up some KPIs around its software support.

 Although the first planned support increase will go ahead in January, all further increases will depend on meeting the KPIs agreed with SAP user groups. Tougher economic times may be retraining technology budgets, but suppliers have been affected too and they are likely to be a lot more end user friendly in the coming year, so it is not all bad news.

Warwick Ashford sent me this interesting post about Google:

Google's CEO Eric Schmidt has been talking a lot about green energy in the US leading to speculation that he may be thinking about stepping down to pursue new interests. Schmidt has also been making suggestions about which technology issues should be a priority for the US government next year. Taken together, there may well be something in the speculation that he is considering a role in the new US administration due to take power in January. This could have big implications for Google's future, which has gone from $86m to over $20bn from 2001 to 2008 under Schmidt's leadership. It is even more plausible that Schmidt is thinking of moving on considering Google managed to end the third quarter of 2008 with a strong profit of $1.35 in the face of financial uncertainty. Now would probably be a relatively good time to bow out and let other worry about how to get returns on Google's $1.65bn investment in YouTube. However, it all remains nothing more than speculations which means that Schmidt is as likely to step down as Google CEO as not. Schmidt remained confident about the "underlying strength" of Google's core search and ads business when the third quarter financial results were announced. I would not put any money on Schmidt leaving Google just yet. He seems driven by challenges and not easily daunted. If I were him, I would also want to prove they YouTube can be made to pay its way and that that faith in Google's core business model was not misplaced.

News this week that a juror was dismissed for sharing the details of a case on Facebook shows the inherent strength as well as dangers of using the web 2.0 phenomenon in business.

Jurors are not allowed to discuss trials with anyone, never mind a social networking site such as Facebook. Newspapers have strict contempt of court laws that forbid them from publishing details that could prejudice a trial. The largely unregulated web is dangerous.

If you transfer this to the business world workers using Facebook could quite easily get their employers into trouble through flippant comments. They could cause harm to a businesses reputation. This is a headache for any IT manager that allows or encourages the use of applications such as Facebook in the workplace.

But then the case also demonstrates the usefulness of collaboration. It is a difficult decision, deciding guilty or not guilty, that collective thought can help. Imagine getting rid of all those time consuming meetings and replacing them with real time discussions of an important issue.

Michael Pincher asked if the credit crunch/recession was going on in Second Life.

As a regular user and fan of Second Life, I can offer some sort of answer here - but with everything that is to do with Second Life ( SL), the answer is not as straight forward as it could be.

Overall, creators are reporting that there has been a smallish drop in sales of their products, but these are in the three preceding months - summer in the Northern Hemisphere, and traditionally a time when most people aren't online, they are off enjoying the sun.

If sales continue to go down, I will be surprised - when there is belt tightening, people spend less on going out and entertainment - $30 USD will buy you a fair whack of L$'s (the Second life currency) - around L$8000. A good piece of clothing in Second Life will cost around L$200-350, and a small piece of virtual land will cost around L$2500 for a 512sqm plot. So there is a fair amount of play in much less than the price of your average night out, and USD$30/£18, can give a fair amount of retail therapy, to assuage the need to buy big value items in real life. The Linden Dollar is a form of currency, as it can be transferred in and out of the virtual world.

Linden Lab has seen some rough waters lately, with some new pricing levels that have attracted widespread criticism from its userbase, along with a marked and trend breaking slowdown and even reverse in virtual land and island sales. The stats do not make pretty reading for the past couple of months.

However, the number of users logging into SL has increased - signups to the service and at around 15k per day, and the users concurrently online are regularly at 75k plus.

I think once the recession starts to hit in real life, people will take refuge in SL as a way of escaping their woes, and also as a form of entertainment that is far cheaper than a night down the pub.

Three major London hospitals have been forced to revert to processing patients manually after a computer virus shut down their computer systems.

St Bartholomew's, the Royal London Hospital and The London Chest Hospital in Bethnal Green were forced to divert ambulances wo other hospitals to ensure that patients did not suffer.

"The Trust's well rehearsed emergency procedures have been activated to ensure that key clinical systems continue while network access is being established," said a statement from Barts and The London Hospital. "Manual backup systems are in use and we are in the process of restoring the computer systems with priority being given to the most important areas for maintaining patients services."

The hospital said operating theatres and outpatients departments remained operational. They have however reduced some non essential activities.

"The Trust is making every effort to provide transport for those patients that need it, but these services are likely to be disrupted by difficulties with computer systems," said the hospital.

Richard Hales, UK and Ireland country manager at F-Secure said an urgent review of the security policy at Barts and The London NHS Trust is needed. "If they are leaving themselves open to a simple computer virus, it could just be the tip of the iceberg."

I'd been employed by AOL for approximately 3 weeks when Yahoo!'s stock hit their dot com boom price of around 113 bucks a share. That was early 2000 - before the bubble burst and the detritus hit the wind machine.

I've not used Yahoo for years - I mean since about '95/'96ish, and so it was a little trip down memory lane when we made a photostory of the different looks of Yahoo! Down the years.

The site needed this slap, they need to refocus, grab the wave to web 2.0, and the company need to have a better eye.

We've seen this scenario before - recently Philip Rosedale of Linden Lab handed over the helm to a new CEO - he may have had the vision, but it was widely acknowledged that the company needed a fresh pair of eyes with perhaps more business acumen than he was able to provide.