Another 700 million$ outsourcing deal from India

On the lines of what Airtel did about a year back, now Idea (another large telecom operator in India) has signed an outsourcing deal with IBM. Another $700 million+ deal. Ofoucrse, it is a multi-year contract. But this is a strong indicator of the new trend. indian majors outsourcing to MNCs like IBM. Reversing the outsourcing trend of US MNCs outsourcing to India. (Again, a different matter where IBM will service this. Given that a very large portion of the global team is based in India, quite likely that the work will happen in India).

Blog.. from successful Indian software (Java Infra) products' entrepreneurs!

Finally.. a blog from successful software products' entrepreneurs! Jay and Vijay Pullur, founders (now CEO and CTO) of Pramati technologies, have started their blog- "Software (Ad)Venturing- Reflections on software, innovation and entrepreneurship".

Looking at the first few posts, lookslike the theme is going to be the new web and the applications infrastructure trends therefrom. Not surprising given that Pramati is a pioneer in Java based applications infrastructure products. (Not many know that Pramati started off with a Product for "Java enabling HTML". Back in 1997-98. This was very similar to what is now JSPs!)

The Indian software industry is highly regarded world-wide (recently came across first hand situations where the large Indian software companies now help companies evolve their IT strategies and enterprise architectures! Compare thsi with even a few years back, when these same companies couldnt even directly influence an App Server decision!). But, the industry is still predominantly services focussed. Very few companies have ventured into software products. And even fewer have ventured into Infrastructure products space. And even even fewer have ventured from India! There are many comapanies that are started by Indians, but from bay area. Driven from the valley, with just the development happening in India. Not too different from any other company with offshore operations.

There are just a handful that have a product built, marketed, sold and supported from India! Pramati stands out, as the most widely known among such companies! (Need I say that I am very very proud of this, given my long association with Pramati! :-) ).

This blog must be interesting. Hearing from two "(ad)venturous" techies. Hopefully, sharing a glimpse of where some of these technologies (and possibly Pramati products) are heading. Do check it out- http://pullur.wordpress.com/

BarCamp3 at Hyderabad- on Web2.0 Communities

We are having the third BarCamp at Hyderabad. On Dec 16th. At Infosys. The theme for this camp is- "Web 2.0 Communities".

Partly inspired by some of the pioneering work put up by th elikes of Orkut in the social domain, and the likes of Fon networks in the commercial domain (though this latter is not in an applications context). There seems to be quite some steam and opportunities in the Web2.0 communities. We ourselves (at Pramati) built the Support portal with many Web2.0 concepts in it- mostly relating to Rich UI and RIA, but one key function built on communities concept...

The portal is meant for all our clients. IN each client organization there are many users that would interact with us for Support. IN normal support delivery models a list of authorized users is maintained. This needs painful housekeeping. IN our support model, as we work with ISVs a lot, we do not have a limit on number of users that can call in from our client organizations. So the best mode for us was to let the client organization configure their users. And to minimize housekeeping fiurther, we wanted to allow any user to "invite" others to join th esupport portal. This would send a mail thru our system, an dth einvited user can by just a few clicks register and become a user. No contacting their sysadmin/relationship manager, no filling up long forms, no approavals from us, no administrative tasks from our support admin.

Further, as multiple clients access the portal, we wanted each user to have a complete view of his/her organization's interactions with our Support. The user can see all deployments and projects from just his/her organization. Can see all users from the organization. And see all cases reported by anyone from the organization. All built off the user communities we have. Eachusert essentially belongs to their parent organization (that we identify by the email domains- works for us as corporates are our clients). Further, users can invite other registered users also to get access to specific projects- which is often the case when dealing with vendors. Some company provides a solution to a client, who runs it on our server. Here the solution provider is not our client- but is essential in resolving any issue that may come up at the client.

IN short a nice case of using user communities effectively to adress a biz problem. We hope to see more such cases and scenarios at the BarCamp. And some demos. And prob some general sessions relating to Web2.0 as well. A parallel Entrepreneural track is also planned- this will be driven by the Bootstrappers' Hyderabad chapter.

Happy Camping! (Now, anyone there with a good idea for a session? Do add it. Even better, do register yourself as a speaker, to deliver the session!)

Java Conference, Dec 1 &2 2006- JavaOne of India?

IndicThreads- Java Conference in Pune (Dec 1,2)

With so much of Java work happening in India, it is about time we had a good conference on Java. The first such conference is being organized by IndiacThreads (the serverSide of India). On Dec 1 &2, there is a Java Conference at Pune. On the lines of JavaOne (though starting on a much smaller scale, the plan is to have this grow to be a leading event in India. Hopefully, we will have the next year?s event here in Hyderabad. (Being a Java conference, needless to say, I and Pramati are fully involved with this :-) )

Per the conference organizers- "2 days of discussions, events and fun. Learn from the experts, discuss with your peers, talk to enthusiasts, feel the buzz and take IT in exciting new directions.With a focus on vendor-neutral content and learning, the IndicThreads conference is the event to be at for all Java software developers."

Do check it out- http://conference.indicthreads.com (And those interested, go ahead and register).

Hyderabad metroblog- LIVE now

Finally.. we have our own Metblog. Metroblogging-Hyderabad. Check it out at- http://hyderabad.metblogs.com/
. The blog is a multi-author blog, as part of the worldwide Metroblogs grouping. Hyderabad now joins other cities with its own metroblog. Where we will share views and news from/of/for Hyderabad.

Interested in contributing? Can apply using: http://metroblogging.com/apply.phtml

Onto hydtech & Hyderabad Metro blogs

On this blog I post more about general tech activities in Hyderabad. Given that we started the hydtechblog and soon to start Hyderabad MetroBlog, I would be posting more there than on this blog of mine.

www.hydtechblog.com
www.metroblogs.com

Back to Pramati!

After 20 great months working on Sonic ESB products and helping build Progress Software India, am now getting back to Pramati.

It started off as an initiative within Pramati. Helping Sonic build the ESB App Dev Product. Sonic, and its parent company Progress Software, liked what they saw happening and decided to setup an India products development center, last April. Was a Great experience starting the Sonic Tools development activities from scratch, and going onto to build the initial teams at Progress Software India (the parent company of Sonic), providing technology leadership and guidance to help create an environment that is more than just a software development center. Great challenge building and delivering value (this is toughest when creating IP!) from a remote team, and setting up approaches to ensure a smooth functioning cross-continental dynamics, and delivery capabilities After a near 20 person year (dev) effort a great set of tools is about to hit the market. Very gratifying. A great team. A great effort. A great experience.

Now, with the first release of the new IDE product due in a few days, and a nice environment created at Progress India, I am going off chasing my other aspirations. Aspirations that may seem little insane to the sane mind. But then that’s me. :-)

Am getting back to Pramati as VP-Middleware Technologies. Responsible for the Middleware products and Middleware technology services. Will continue to engage in the Infrastructure software products space. And actively participate/drive any technology activities in Hyderabad (very close to my heart). And ofcourse, continue to teach at IIIT.

My new bearings: rameshl@pramati.com (or rameshl1@yahoo.com). (Blog remains the same- http://jroller.com/page/rameshl)