TCS wins Rs85 crore Indian Bank contract for rural banking solution

Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) has won a Rs85 crore contract for implementation of a financial inclusion solution for Indian Bank.
The project, based on smart card and cloud computing technologies, would enable the bank to offer rural banking services across 5,500 villages, according to the software exporter.

TCS signs 10-year core banking deal with Deutsche Bank

Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), India’s largest information technology (IT) services provider said it had signed a 10-year deal with Deutsche Bank to replace its existing core banking solutions with TCS Bancs. The implementation will cover over 30 countries.

InformationWeek Confers "ValueHonors" Awards to Six HCL Technologies Customers

HCL Technologies Infrastructure Services Division (HCL), one of the leading global IT Services Provider and subsidiary of HCL Technologies Ltd., today announced that six of its customers: Cummins, Teradyne, one of the world's leading mobile manufacturers, Old Mutual Wealth Management: Skandia and Xerox have been facilitated with "ValueHonors Awards" by InformationWeek, a UBM TechWeb media brand. The winners were announced at the Information Week 500 annual awards ceremony which is held in St Regis, Monarch Beach CA, every year. The customers were recognized for their immense contribution in creating "value and transforming business" in their global sourcing engagements through active collaboration with their sourcing partner.

American AgCredit successfully implements HCL's CapitalStream

HCL Technologies has announced American AgCredit has successfully implemented the CapitalStream Straight Through Processing (STP) solution to gain greater operational control, improve reporting capabilities and ensure data integrity.

Cogizant-Microsoft partner to develop cloud computing

Indian software firm cognizant has partnered with global software giant Microsoft to provide cloud computing solutions

TCS , Infosys, Wipro in race for IRDA IT project

 Indian IT giants, including TCS, Infosys and Wipro , have been shortlisted by insurance regulator IRDA for financial bidding to implement its enterprise resource planning (ERP) system.

Oracle Pulls Plug On OpenSolaris Development Work

Oracle apparently has decided to shut down the OpenSolaris project, the open-source version of the Solaris
The news that OpenSolaris is being discontinued came in an internal memo to Oracle developers late last week that was leaked to the OpenSolaris mailing list and posted online.
The memo said Oracle would devote its development resources to Solaris 11, the next release of the commercial version of the Unix-based operating system. Last week John Fowler, Oracle's executive vice president of systems, outlined the time table under which Solaris 11 will ship next year.

Novell upgrades Mono Tools for Visual Studio

Novell this week unveiled Mono Tools for Visual Studio 2.0, which enables development of Microsoft .Net applications for Linux, Unix, and Mac OS X from within Microsoft's Visual Studio IDE.
Built as an add-in module for Visual Studio, Mono Tools for Visual Studio enables .Net developers to leverage existing skill sets to create applications for Linux, Unix, and Mac OS X. Version 2.0 features backing for Mac OS X and support for Mono on Windows. In turn, developers can now test and debug on Mono without the overhead of switching between operating systems.

"It's easier to debug against the local instance. A .Net developer can now start working on making an application Mono-compatible without having to first set up a Linux or Mac target," said Joseph Hill, Novell product manager for Mono, in an email explaining benefits of Mono support on Windows.

Cognizant Performances

 Cognizant Donates to Needy Schools

The Cognizant Outreach program plans to deliver 143,000 notebooks to over 20,000 students from 22 schools in and around Chennai throughout the school year beginning June 2010. The project, according to one headmaster, has already gone “a long way in making a positive difference in the lives of these children.”

Cognizant Soars to 8th Place

Cognizant soared to 8th place, up from 51st place in 2009, on Bloomberg Businessweek's Tech 100 list of the world’s top-performing technology companies. Companies are ranked on shareholder return, operating income, total revenues, and revenue growth.

Bloomberg Businessweek 50: Cognizant Ranks Among Top Performers

For the fourth consecutive year Cognizant ranked among the top performing companies in the S&P 500. In the 14th annual Bloomberg Businessweek 50, Cognizant ranked 47th based on overall stock performance over the past five years

Google protests Apple's developers agreement

SAN FRANCISCO, US: Google Inc said  recent changes to Apple's developers agreement would effectively cripple Google's advertising tools for the iPhone, creating "artificial" barriers to competition.
Apple changed the language of the agreement . As written, it appears to prohibit certain third-party ad agencies from collecting critical usage data from iPhone applications.
This would hamper rival ad agencies' ability to target their ads and make it more difficult to compete with Apple's own ad network, which is set to launch July 1.
"This change is not in the best interests of users or developers," Omar Hamoui, founder of mobile ad company AdMob, said in a blog post. AdMob was recently purchased by Google.
Hamoui said Google will raise its concerns with Apple, which has declined to comment on the new terms of its developers agreement.
"Artificial barriers to competition hurt users and developers and, in the long run, stall technological progress," Hamoui said.
AdMob recently disclosed that roughly one-third of the ads it served in April were for devices running the iPhone platform. The iPad and the iPod touch also use the software.
The initial language of Apple's new iPhone developers agreement, which emerged in April, prohibited data about app usage to be transmitted to any outside analytics companies, which help agencies target their ads.
Those rules rankled some app developers and generated questions from the Federal Trade Commission, one developer said.
The updated language -- which was first noted by the MediaMemo blog -- appeared to put in place significant new restrictions, particularly when it comes to Google.
It allows user data to be transmitted only to "an independent advertising service provider whose primary business is serving mobile ads," one that is not affiliated with "a developer or distributor of mobile devices, mobile operating systems."
This would effectively bar Google, which designed the Android mobile operating system and makes the Nexus One smartphone.
Google paid $750 million for AdMob. After holding the deal up for six months, the FTC approved it last month, saying Apple's entry into the mobile ad market would increase competition.
Apple purchased mobile ad company Quattro Wireless in January, after being outbid by Google for AdMob.
In April, Apple unveiled iAd, its own advertising network, which will sell and host ads on the iPhone platform. Apple said  it has already reeled in $60 million worth of commitments for mobile ads.

Google Buys Bump Technologies

Google has been making acquisitions at a rapid clip and May 3,2010 added another new company to the fold in Bump Technologies, maker of 3D desktop offering BumpTop.
The Bump Technologies acquisition boosts the number of public acquisitions that Google has made so far in 2010 to nine.Bump Technologies revealed the deal on Friday. Google reportedly confirmed the purchase of the three-year-old Bump Technologies, but did not disclose financial terms or additional information. Google could not be reached for additional comment.Google's acquisition of BumpTop could be a sign that Google is looking to take on Apple and its widely popular iPhone smartphone and iPad tablet. BumpTop uses what the company calls pile creation techniques for 3D multitouch desktops on Windows and Macs. The technology lets users scroll through and shuffle documents from the desktop, as seen in this video demo of BumpTop.
Google could add the BumpTop technology to its line of Google Android smartphones and rumored Android tablet to enable multitouch and offer a unique interface experience with a 3D desktop UI.

The acquisition of BumpTop follows a string of recent pickups by the US-based search giant, which this year has acquired a host of other companies including social search company Aardvark; hardware maker Agnilux; Microsoft Office collaboration suite DocVerse; video streaming company Episodic; game application and widget maker LabPixies; online photo editor Picnik; visual search provider Plink; and mobile email provider reMail.Google's 2010 acquisitions follow a trajectory started in late 2009, with the August purchase of video codec provider On2 Technologies followed by the $750 million acquisition of mobile ad maker AdMob, which is still pending approval by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC).

Google comes with services, apps for iPad

Search engine giant, Google announced that it has optimized few services and introduced apps for the recently launched Apple iPad.
Google released an experimental user interface, with two-pane view for list of conversations and messages, for the iPad built on the Gmail for mobile HTML5 web app.
This interface was launched last year for the iPhone and Android devices.
“ Tablets like the iPad give us even more room to innovate,” said a blog post by Punit Soni, product manager, Google Mobile.
The blog further said that the iPad user would see something different of Gmail than what is seen on the desktop.
“ We’ve evaluated the behavior of each Google web app using the iPad Simulator, and we are serving the interface we feel works best. If you’d like any help using our products on iPad, please click the 'Help' link within the product,” wrote Soni.
iPad would also feature various other apps of Google, such as YouTube, Maps, search by voice and My Location. These can be downloaded at the App store.
Another blog post by Alastair Tse, Software Engineer at the Google Mobile website said, “ While this first version of Google Mobile App for iPad is essentially the same app we’ve built for iPhone, we’re working on improving Google Mobile App so that it takes advantage of iPad’s features.”

Sybase extends support for iPad, Android devices

DUBLIN, Calif.: Sybase, Inc., a provider in enterprise and mobile software, recently announced support for iPad and Android devices with the latest release of Afaria.
With strong consumer adoption of highly functional mobile devices, enterprises are now able to embrace this widespread demand by providing secure access to corporate information.
With the new ability to secure and manage iPad and Android, Sybase extends its ubiquitous device support to a list that includes iPhone, Windows Mobile, Windows, Symbian and BlackBerry, said a press release.
The features of the solution include:
* Ability to manage Android devices from the Afaria console, enabling IT to configure devices, control password
   policies, perform remote kill and more.
* Expanded management capabilities including the ability to perform a remote kill for iPhone and iPad.
* Expanded security to block unknown or non-compliant devices from accessing corporate assets for the
   iPhone, iPad, Android, Symbian and Windows Mobile platforms.
* Enhancements to scalability, ensuring iPhone and iPad management is highly scalable for on-premise
   deployments as well as when managed in a hosted environment.

Google launches Nexus One mobile handset

The device combines the latest in hardware from HTC Corporation with the newest Android software.
"The Nexus One belongs in the emerging class of devices which we call 'superphones,' with the 1GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon chipset making it as powerful as your laptop computer of three to four years ago," said Andy Rubin, VP of Engineering at Google.
"It's our way to raise the bar on what's possible when it comes to creating the best mobile experience for consumers."
Google's Nexus One is only 11.5mm thick and weighs just 130g.
Onboard memory consists of 512MB Flash memory and 512MB RAM.
Expandable memory consists of a 4GB removable SD Card, expandable to 32GB.
The Nexus One runs on Android 2.1, a version of the platform's Eclair software, which offers advanced applications and features including Google Maps Navigation, including offering turn-by-turn driving directions with voice output; email; and Android Market to access over 18,000 applications.
Consumers can buy the Nexus One through Google's Web store at www.google.com/phone without service (so that any GSM network SIM card can be inserted into the device) for US$529, or with service from one of Google's operator partners.
Google has announced that it will initially take orders from consumers in the US, UK, Singapore, and Hong Kong.

Microsoft to introduce new licensing scheme for Office 2010

Microsoft is implementing a new sales strategy with the coming release of its Office 2010 it says should make it easier to sell and deploy for channel partners, but one that could take away their opportunities to sell upgrades.

With the launch of Microsoft Office 2010, expected on June 15, the vendor wants to pre-load a new Office image that includes all three versions of the application on between 80 percent and 100 percent of all new systems sold, said Vic Barakat, OEM distribution partner account manager at Microsoft.

shanmugam blog

Microsoft Unveils Its First Android App

In a surprise move Microsoft has launched its Tag app for Google's Android platform. The Tag app allows users to use their mobile phones as a mobile barcode reader. Users simply have to point their phone's camera at a tag, snap a picture, and the Tag application will interpret it. Microsoft has already launched this app for iPhone, Windows Mobile, BlackBerry and Symbian S60 phones, reports TechCrunch.