According to an Oracle whitepaper, collaborative Web 2.0 technologies enable enterprises to foster employees critical thinking and creativity while providing a platform to capitalize on their innovations for product and process improvement.

But what goes into the process? Web-based end-user content management, user-driven applications, blogs, wikis, aggregation, user participation, collaboration, etc… most features that would complement unified communications technology. And yet are the enterprises adopting Web 2.0?
Dhruv Singhal, Director, Sales Consulting Fusion Middleware, Oracle India admitted that non-enterprise segments are easily adopting the technology. People coming to Facebook or LinkedIn are comfortable using it. he agreed that security continues to remain a concern, but that vendors are introducing tools to address it.

So how mature is the Indian enterprise? Well, they are using Web 2.0 for internal communication. It is used to share information with internal customers, or with partners and dealers. The information is largely regarding a new marketing campaign or a new product launch. Enterprises want to make their people more productive and use Web 2.0 as one more tool.

Oracle has sold its Web 2.0 products to some large enterprises in India, but did not disclose names because of NDAs. Singhal however gave examples of how the automotive, manufacturing and telecom segments could use this technology. The auto giants can direct interact with customers. Blogs can be dry. They are not interactive. Moderated forums can be much more alive. The manufacturer can talk about features and other things, and the users can give live feedback. Similarly, telecom companies can use information to sell products, study user behaviour to form marketing strategies.
Right now our focus is on expanding the customer base and penetration Web 2.0. What will be Oracle s USP when competition such as IBM, Microsoft, SAP, and even Intel has products which offer enterprise and SMB customers with Web experience which enables the management to communicate with workers and external customers on the same lines of Oracle s UC offering?

Singhal said that on the collaboration side, Oracle can integrate the front-end with the backend applications. We support SAP, IBM, Lotus Notes, email, and any other middleware. Java and .Net make interoperability easier. This is a great value proposition. We also have ability to offer rich client interface (also through browser based applications.). This is besides Web 2.0 feature staples like tagging, ranking, and commenting.

And Oracle is also utilizing its business intelligence (BI) expertise to further ease communication and collaboration tools, back-end integration efforts.

Not to be left behind, SAP too lay focus on this technology. None other than Leo Apothekar, CEO SAP at the Sapphire 2009 event said, The digital generation are joining the workforce, and they expect enterprise software to be easy to use, to be rich, and to be collaborative. They even want enterprise software to be fun.

Microsoft too explained its Web 2.0 strategy in terms of its Microsoft Office 2007 and enhancements in products released thereafter.

The information technology (IT) industry will see a new period of rapid growth in investment, driven primarily by new smart computing technology.

According to Forrester Research’s IT 2009-2016 Long-Term Forecast, current IT vendors IBM, Oracle, and Microsoft are best positioned to win in next-gen technology, while GE and Semens will emerge as bigger factors.

Old technology will continue to be in demand, but purchases will grow at trend rate. Smart computing solutions will address critical business issues.Sales directly to business - not to IT.

Investment in new technology driven by strategic rationales, not cost/benefit calculations, with multimillion-dollar deals.

Highly vertical solutions will capture more of the growth, although not the largest share of sales.
Asset-intensive industries like government, healthcare, utilities, education, and professional services will be the biggest buyers.

Forrester describes smart computing as flexible, adaptable, responsive, and extended IT systems that incorporate awareness (location, status, condition) and analytics to make IT more intelligent to solve new business problems.

Ziva Software is eyeing 10 million hits by 2010 with Zook, its mobile search engine. The company has also partnered with operators like Virgin, Idea Cellular, Spice, Aircel, and Airtel (Sri Lanka), etc.

Ajay Sethi, COO of Ziva Software said, “As a startup we are using our business intelligence in mobile space. Zook provides exact answers to every user query. Zook fetches answers (and not links/URLs of the matching web-pages) from the across the web.”

Zook also utilizes community participation and an active feedback loop to constantly improve the quality of results. Even more importantly, answers sent as response to SMS-based searches are reviewed by us. This helps Zook to ensure that every user query is provided with an exact and relevant answer immediately, said Sethi.

Zook has been promoted to the Aircel subscribers via the on-deck portal presence since January 2009. As per the partnership, Zook will use fetch engine paradigm to provide off-deck search experience to Aircel users and in the process.

Zook powers the SMS-based local search service for Virgin Mobile (on 58686 with Ask prefix) and with Idea Cellular, Zook provides local search and community-assisted search solutions for IdeaFresh portal.

Besides Zook will power the specialized portal for Idea’s roaming users, personalized and custom alerts service (such as stock subscriptions) provided to SMS users and has been available to the Idea Cellular subscribers since September 2007.

A recent report indicates that India has a mobile subscriber base of 400 million of which 30-40 million have GPRS enabled phones. However, since only about 50% of these actually use these facilities, the actual user base would be 20-23 million in India, said Sethi.

“We are working with mobile operators and also manufacturers. So shortly Nokia and Samsung will have Zook as their default browser at the back end,” he said.

Sethi said that unlike Google, Microsoft and Yahoo who are presently more in the online space, Zook is exclusive in the mobile Internet space. Zook combines innovative algorithms with human intelligence to improve the quality of the search results. Zook makes the entire universe of information from the web, partners and community as needed by users on mobile phones available as exact answers.

“Our team of 15 techies use the fetch engine to search from Yahoo and Microsoft engines, but since Google does not have a open free API, we don’t search on Google,” he said.

Zook services are presently available only in India. Most of the hits come from the three metros of Mumbai, Delhi and Chennai and an equally warm response has been from smaller tier II cities in Western UP, Tamilnadu, Gujarat and Maharashtra.

The company was initially funded by Ojas Partners to a tune of Rs 7.5 crore and may go in for the second round of funding in July 2009. Revenues are going in and the traffic is also growing so will decide if we need funding next month, said Sethi.

To distinguish itself from competitors, Hewlett Packard (HP) India is offering high end technology that was once only for the top-end notebooks now to the masses. Some of the technologies that are being rolled out include the LED Display Screens; e-SATA Interface; File Sanatizer; Chiplet Keyboards and IMR technology.

During the last few quarters, HP recorded a slower growth in the enterprise sector and so is focusing on the consumers. The company has now integrated latest technologies across security, display and download speeds.

HP India, said, “The new range has been conceptualized after extensive research to offer the best experience to the customers. This time we have integrated a number of technologies that were earlier used only in the top-end notebooks to the lower-end as well.”

As part of its green initiative, HP wants its products to be mercury-free and so has replaced its LCD screens with those of LED ones. In fact, mercury is reported to affect the ozone layer.

The new LED screens present many advantages over traditional LCD screens. The use of SMD technology enables wide viewing angles, uniformity at very short viewing distances, brightness, high resolution and colour depth and uniformity. Besides, LED has lower energy consumption, longer battery life while LCD screens reflect while watching thus straining the eyes.

“With download speed being must for any notebooks, HP is offering external serial advanced technology attachment or eSATA, an external interface for SATA technologies. It competes with FireWire 400 and universal serial bus (USB) 2.0 to provide fast data transfer speeds for external storage devices. We have provided this technology to all our notebooks irrespective of the cost or the segment as it helps download 6X times faster than the USB speed,” said Diptesh Ghosh, category head, consumer notebook, HP personal systems group (PSG) India.

SATA replaced ATA legacy technology as the next generation internal bus interface for hard drives. It is a good choice for external disk storage. Unlike USB and FireWire interfaces, eSATA does not have to translate data between the interface and the computer. This enhances data transfer speeds, while saving computer processor resources and eliminating the need for an extra off-load chip.

“Likewise did you know deleted files aren’t really wiped clean from your hard drive? Anyone with basic knowledge of data recovery can ‘undelete’ it. However, HP Disk Sanitizer (shredder) permanently destroys data on your hard drive using a US defense algorithm so that it cannot be accessed even with advanced data recovery tools. In this case even the BIOS can’t be tampered using this software,” said Grover.

Unlike the membrane keyboard, HP has introduced chiplet keyboard to give them a longer and are more durable life. For every key, the conductive traces on the bottom layer are normally separated by a non-conductive gap. Electrical current cannot flow between them; the switch is open. However, when pushed down, conductive material on the underside of the top layer bridges the gap between those traces; the switch is closed, current can flow, and a keypress is registered.

Besides HP is also offering IMR technology to give notebooks a scratch resistant body and so can retain its new looks for a long time.

The Indian IT/ITeS industry is expected to grow at a CAGR of 13.9% and reach Rs. 534,479 crore (over $ 110 billion) in 2013, reveals IT advisory firm IDC.

In 2009, the overall India IT/ ITeS industry is expected to grow at10.8% and touch Rs. 3,09,573 crore (over $64 billion). The domestic market is estimated to grow at 10.2%, to touch Rs.1,09,406 crore (over $ 22 billion) and at the same time, exports are expected togrow at 11.2% to cross Rs.2,00,000 crore.

“Though there are certain signs of a revival happening in the domestic arena, the spending may not begin to increase just yet. IT spending behaviour would remain conservative throughout 2009 due to uncertainty in the economic environment,” said Kapil Dev Singh, country manager (India) at IDC.”The hardware market will remain under pressure through the year, while the software and IT services markets will also be affected, though to a comparatively lesser extent,” said Singh.

The domestic IT and ITeS market growth projection for the period 2008-13 is expected to moderate to 15.8%, as against the average annual growth of 25% recorded during 2003-08. This signals the onset of a new phase of growth, and this phase will see IT vendors helping enterprises design and deliver ‘new age’ services to their customers by leveraging the existing IT infrastructure.

Educomp Solutions, an education company, in a joint venture (JV) with Pearson will support vocational learning in India.

Under the agreement, Pearson will acquire a 50 per cent stake for $ 17.5 million in Educomp’s existing vocational training business.

The technology-based teaching products will be targeted to schools, e-learning initiatives, public-private partnerships with 14 state governments in India, as well as its nascent businesses in school management.

India’s new government has identified not just employment but “employability” as a priority, and is committed to multiplying the supply and scope of appropriate skills training for its young and growing labour force, said the company in a press release.

The training will be backed by industry-standard certifications provided by Edexcel, Pearson’s market-leading qualifications and accreditation arm, according to a press release.