How to build a quantum internet

You could be forgiven for thinking that a quantum version of the internet is a couple of-afternoons-in-the-lab away from being plumbed into your living room. In reality, there are significant engineering challenges to overcome, says Jeff Kimble from the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena and one of the leading thinkers on the links between the quantum and information sciences.

If you want to know about some of the bigger hurdles that physicists face in wanting to build a quantum internet, you could do worse than look at his account of this field on the arXiv today.

Some of the challenges are particularly daunting such as the unambiguous creation and verification of entanglement.

But, ever the optimist, he concludes:

“I have every confidence that extending entanglement across quantum networks will create wonderful scientific opportunities for the exploration of physical systems that have not heretofore existed in the natural world”.

Ref: arxiv.org/abs/0806.4195: The Quantum Internet

I.T.'s turning point? and article in frontline by C.P. CHANDRASEKHAR

There are signs of foreign firms increasing their presence in an increasingly concentrated information technology sector.

MOHAMMED YOUSUF


The sprawling Cyberabad in the Andhra Pradesh capital offers high-end infrastructure for the I.T. industry. With the U.S. remaining India’s principal market, the growth slowdown in that country together with the long-run depreciation of the dollar has begun to tell on export performance.


TIMES are hard for the world economy, particularly the United States’ economy. This should make the period difficult for any industry that depends on global markets, especially the U.S. market, for much of its demand.

This, unfortunately, is true of India’s information technology (I.T.) industry, dominated by exports of software and IT-enabled services (ITeS). Yet there are signs of cautious optimism among some industry insiders and observers based on the premise that the cost-cutting encouraged by slow global and U.S. growth will increase outsourcing to low-cost locations such as India, which would be good for growth even if not necessarily for margins.

It is too early to empirically confirm this speculation, but the evidence permits some initial judgments. In July every year, Dataquest releases its data on the performance of the top 200 I.T. firms in India the previous financial year. The information, unlike that of NASSCOM, covers the whole of the I.T. sector, including hardware, software, software services and ITeS. It also provides detailed information on the top 20 firms in the composite industry.

This data set, especially more information on the ways in which data are collated in the case of firms whose performance indicators and financial accounts are not easily available in the public domain, leaves much to be desired. But with almost all the data on the Indian I.T. industry being collated by private organisations such as NASSCOM, MAIT, Dataquest and IDC India, this information, which covers both the hardware and software segments, has been an important basis for analysing industry trends in the country.

As yet, we have access only to the first round of data released by Dataquest (July 15), focussing on the top 20 firms in the industry, in the export sector and in the domestic market. The information on the top 20 is an adequate basis for analysing industry trends, not only because they account for an overwhelming share of the revenues of the top 200 (64 per cent in 2007-08) but also because these are the most dynamic firms and have remained industry leaders for a long time. The top 20 list includes industry veterans such as Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), WIPRO and Infosys, which epitomise India’s I.T. success.

On the surface, there is a sameness about the trends the data on the top 20 reveal. The top firms in the industry continue to grow at a scorching pace, with the trend rate of growth until 2007-08 amounting to 34 per cent per annum whether we take 1991-92 or 2001-02 as the base year to make our calculations. Services firms dominate the industry in terms of number and revenues, with 95 of the top 200 companies engaged in services delivery and another 20 in the production and sale of software products. And export revenues still constitute the mainstay of the industry, with the revenues of the top 20 exporters (at Rs.1,02,451 crore) far exceeding those of the top 20 revenue earners in the domestic market (Rs.74,843 crore).

These perennial positives notwithstanding, there is some cause for caution. With the U.S. remaining India’s principal market, the growth slowdown in that country together with the long-run depreciation of the dollar (despite fluctuations) has begun to tell on export performance. The top 20 exporters from the industry recorded a growth in export revenues of 30 per cent in 2007-08 as compared with 45 per cent in the previous year.

Since the growth of revenues of the top 20 firms catering to the domestic market was also slightly lower at 27 per cent in 2007-08 as compared with 31 per cent in the previous year, the performance of the top 20 firms in the industry was disappointing. Top 20 revenues rose by just 23 per cent in 2007-08 as compared with 42 per cent in 2006-07, pointing to the beginnings of a slowdown that could last for a long time. This could be the first sign that the software and ITeS boom is losing momentum.

This slowdown has been concealed by two factors. First, there have been individual companies that have recorded remarkably high rates of growth of revenues, albeit from small bases in the case of some. Thus, 13 of the top 200 companies covered by Dataquest registered triple-digit growth rates in 2007-08. Second, there have been a few companies that managed to expand their net revenues significantly in the financial year gone by. These trends have conveyed the impression that despite being dependent on the U.S. market, the Indian industry is decoupled from a growth slowdown in the U.S. market because the deceleration in growth is more than neutralised by enhanced outsourcing by firms in a recessionary environment.

Concentration of revenues

A. ROY CHOWDHURY


Inside a software company at Salt Lake, Sector-V, Kolkata’s I.T. corridor. Recent evidence shows that as the I.T. industy grows to maturity, the features that made it unique are losing their significance.

The slowdown in growth is not the only new, even if disconcerting, aspect of the figures for the last financial year. The numbers released thus far by Dataquest point to a consolidation of certain trends in the industry that have some troubling long-term implications. The first of these trends is a tendency towards increased concentration of revenues generated by firms in the industry. The top 200 firms account for an overwhelming share of the industry.

In 2005-06, for example, the revenues of the top 200 firms were placed at about 85 per cent of the total industry revenues. What is noticeable is the growing concentration within the top 200 segment. If we take the group of firms constituting the top 200, the top 20 firms (or 10 per cent of the number) accounted for 63 per cent of the revenues of the top 200. The next 30 (15 per cent) accounted for a near proportional 17 per cent of the revenues. And the remaining 150 (or 75 per cent in numerical terms) contributed just 20 per cent of the revenues.

Consolidation and concentration are part of the industry’s maturity. Underlying this concentration is a change in the nature of the firms that constitute the top 20 in the industry as a whole. Increasingly, firms with foreign parents populate the top 20 league tables. While 67 of the top 200 firms are foreign companies, 13 of the top 20 are known international companies. This is indeed a relatively new tendency. The number was as low as three out of the top 20 ten years ago and seven at the beginning of this decade.

What is interesting to note is the differential distribution of foreign companies among the top exporters and top suppliers to the domestic market. While 12 of the top 20 exporters of I.T. products and services from India are Indian firms, only four of the top 20 revenue earners in the domestic market are Indian. It has been known that foreign companies have been displacing Indian firms as major exporters, especially with the growth of the captive outsourcing facilities of foreign firms in the country. But this process has not yet displaced Indian companies such as TCS, Infosys, Wipro and Satyam, service providers that remain the top exporters.

The situation is different in the domestic market. Over the past two decades, an increasingly liberal hardware and software import regime and a liberal policy with regard to foreign presence in the domestic hardware and software market has substantially increased the foreign share in these markets. This did not matter when the size of the domestic market was small in both absolute terms and relative to export revenues. However, as the diffusion in the use of I.T. increases, this unusual distribution of target markets between foreign and Indian firms can become significant.

What is noteworthy is that as the use of I.T. in business and in government increases rapidly, with a limited effort to shift away from proprietary to open source software, the presence of international software product suppliers in the Indian market is increasing rapidly. At a time when the diffusion in the use of I.T. in the country is increasing rapidly, foreign firms have displaced domestic firms in the domestic market at a much faster rate.

At first this was predominantly in the hardware segments where a liberalised import regime and substantially lowered tariffs helped international firms out-compete not just Indian brands but the huge assembled personal computer industry in the country. But, more recently, software presence is becoming important. For example, two global software majors – Microsoft and SAP – registered revenue growth of 29 and 104 per cent respectively in the domestic market in 2007-08.

The emerging picture is clear. Even while India’s scorching pace of I.T. services export growth slows, there are signs that foreign firms are increasing their presence in an increasingly concentrated I.T. sector. This has two implications.

First, I.T. export revenues are increasingly being garnered by foreign firms. But more importantly, as the domestic market for I.T. hardware and software grows, fuelled by increased government expenditure aimed at increasing I.T. use, foreign firms are coming to dominate the rapidly growing domestic market for both hardware and software. This would mean that slowing revenue and employment growth would be accompanied by a shift in the net foreign exchange earned by the I.T. sector, even leading, perhaps, to a net outflow sometime in the foreseeable future.

India’s software and ITeS industry was seen as different from much else of modern business in India because it was a high-growth sector driven by huge net foreign exchange earnings. It was pampered with tax concessions for this reason, and the concessions that were to end in 2009 have now been extended to 2010. But more recent evidence shows that as the industry grows to maturity, the features that made it unique are losing their significance.

Poor Rich.....

Japan exempts programmers from jury duty because they are “too busy”

The Japanese supreme court is currently developing guidelines as to what type of jobs are allowed to decline jury duty summons for a new citizen judge system, which is planned to be introduced in May 2009.

The current list of excusable jobs in the initial draft includes System Engineer (or, “SE”, which is a bit different from the original meaning. SE is now a Japanese IT industry expression that means senior software engineer). The reasoning behind this decision is that some people feel that the programmers may need to be dispatched for emergency system troubles.

The current bill for the citizen judge system states refusal of duty is only permitted when the selected citizen is: over 70 years old, a student, severely ill, in charge of caring relatives and minors living together, or attending causes brutal mental and/or economical loss

Microsoft's Bid for Yahoo Is All About Big-Budget Brand Advertising

Sure, there's bad news out there, what with the panicky Fed and people whispering the R-word. But somehow, the wired world continues to churn out smart, useful, occasionally game-changing ideas.
From the rise in instant manufacturing to the growth of open-source business models, these trends show that innovation can bloom even in a grim economic climate.
Here's a look at nine trends driving business in 2008 — and a deeper explanation of the surprising secrets to Apple's success.

The search wars are over, and Google has won. Despite years of effort, Microsoft and Yahoo together account for just a third of US Internet searches and even less of the $8 billion market for search-related advertising. But the good news for all of Google's rivals is that online advertising is about much more than search. The new battleground is display — the kind of graphics-intensive spots that were left for dead after the Internet bust — and the emerging category of video. And the latest salvo in that war was Microsoft's $45 billion bid for Yahoo.

There are other reasons to buy Yahoo — its wealth of top-notch Web services, for example — but ultimately it comes down to advertising. Web advertising is in the midst of a metamorphosis. As television implodes, marketing chiefs are turning to the Net to create branding initiatives. They know you can't build a brand with little text ads that pop up next to search results. But you can with video and display, especially now that display has moved beyond static banner ads to include Flash animation and sound. Web advertising, which passed $20 billion last year in the US, is expected to surpass $60 billion in four years, and display and video ads will account for more than a third of the total. That means there's an opportunity to make money by dominating those categories the same way Google dominates the search market. "The race is on," says Mark Kingdon, CEO of digital ad agency Organic.

Google is already off and running. In February it rolled out AdSense for Video — an early attempt to bring video advertising to the thousands of sites it now delivers text ads to. What Yahoo brings to the table is numbers: It is the world's most popular Internet publisher, delivering Web pages to nearly 140 million people a month in the US alone. Yahoo also delivers ads to a vast network of independent sites, increasing its advertising reach to 85 percent of US Internet users, according to comScore. Microsoft reaches 56 percent of the US Internet population through MSN and Windows Live, but it still lacks credibility with Madison Avenue. Put it together with Yahoo, however, and you have a scale that even Google can't match.

Even if the Yahoo purchase goes through, a company like Microsoft needs more than reach. It also needs the technology to deliver the right ads to the right eyeballs at the right time and come back with a precise measurement of the results. But as Tim Hanlon of digital consultancy Denuo observes, "The best stuff is not coming from the leviathan players." One of the biggest advances in advertising technology, behavioral targeting, was pioneered by little firms like Tacoda (before it was bought by AOL) and the Drivepm unit of aQuantive (before it was bought by Microsoft). Behavioral targeting tracks surfers as they traverse the Web, making it feasible to deliver automobile ads, say, not just on auto-related homepages but on other sites visited by someone who's shown an interest in buying a car. That has opened up vast new quantities of inventory — Web pages that previously would have been a tough sell to advertisers but now make sense. "There's a lot more innovation to come," Hanlon says. The irony is that it probably won't be delivered by Yahoo, whether or not it's acquired by Microsoft. After all, this is a company that fumbled every opportunity in search. "It's a classic case," Hanlon adds. "Do two wrongs make a right?"

Whoz the one Giving back to India !!!!!!

IT Sector not contributing to Indian Economy - AM Naik“Infosys is so focused on making 26% profits, their India revenue is less that 1.5%. So India doesn’t benefit with its own people. This makes me angry. Now they say they are looking at India and China, forced by their profitability issue. Not because they have any love for our country! ” -AM Naik, CMD of L&T

The IT sector is extremely upset with AM Naik — the CMD of L&T, India’s biggest infrastructure and engineering company, for making a statement against the Information Technology companies of not contributing to the national economy.

AM Naik, CMD, L&T said:” Please find out whether Infosys does any Indian work. They are so focussed on making 26% PAT. I think some days ago they said that they will now focus on India and China. So far their revenue in India was less than 1.5%. So India doesn’t benefit with its own people. This is really my anger.”

Reacting to Naik’s statement, the IT companies, meanwhile, have expressed anger over the remark made by a chief representative of an old economy company. Especially, the IT bigwig — Infosys — which was targetted and singled out with the criticism, has reacted with particular aggression. The company’s Director, Human Resource — Mohandas Pai — reacted to the statement made by Naik and categorically said that had it not been for the IT sector, India would have had to pawn its gold once again like it did in 1991.

Meanwhile, other IT bigwigs too reacted very strongly. Echoing the sentiments of Mr Pai, Girish Paranjpe, President, Wipro said: The IT sector has given workers a global exposure and offers great career opportunity to millions of Indians.

Naik is upset with the ‘Bangalore club’ as he prefers to call Wipro, Infosys and the slew of other IT companies. He despairs at the way they hire engineers to write code and alluded to their grouse of poor infrastructure in Bangalore as a creation of their own making.

Who asked them to hire civil engineers and mechanical engineers? he asked. BComs and BScs would suffice for writing code, he says.

The least that the politicians can do is to stop cutting ribbons in the outsourcing industry. There are more than 75,000 engineers working on design in India for foreigners.

They are the brains, and there are 1,50,000 other engineers working in the IT industry, who are non-computer science engineers. Then the Bangalore club complains that the infrastructure there is cracking.

Who asked you to hire 1,00,000 engineers and bring them to Bangalore? Secondly, who asked you to recruit civil engineers? There are no civil engineers available to build infrastructure.

His other interview is available at the link below :This life is reserved for L&T

‘This life is reserved for L&T’ - Satish John
Thursday, November 15, 2007 03:58 IST

This is the irascible A M Naik’s eighth year at the helm of India’s most valuable engineering and construction company, Larsen and Toubro. In a freewheeling interview, Naik talks about the journey taken so far, and the one ahead, in a three-hour conversation with Satish John.

Excerpts:

L&T’s core businesses have hit a sweet spot?

All my businesses are core. What was not core we sold. And the so called non-core businesses we have, will go eventually. But all the new verticals that we are forming are in the core businesses.

L&T will have 12 verticals, including engineering & construction, power and hydrocarbons, electricals, machinery business, industrial products, heavy engineering, technology and ship building. Thus nine of the verticals are mature businesses. Two are part of our mid-term and long-term strategy.

We have not given L&T Finance a status of a vertical yet. This business is a five year play which could turn out to be very important. Beyond 2011-12, these 12 verticals could go to 14 or 15, and then we will stop.

About 3-4 years ago there was a cover story in Businessworld that said L&T would be India’s GE? Is it a fair surmise?
I don’t think they said that. They only said that my style of working was like Jack Welch (legendary GE Chairman).

We have a GE type character -a conglomerate style of doing business. We are engineering driven after we sold our cement business. We (GE and L&T) don’t have anything much in common except electrical switchgears.

GE also has finance…
Our finance business is puny. We pushed our finance related businesses only in the last three years. One company does financing and debt, and the other invests in infrastructure projects by picking up equity. It is currently doing more than 20 projects. We have investment in Bangalore airport. We have investment in Kakinada port, several roads and properties.

Like Welch, you personally pitch for business from big clients?
I have done roadshows with 20 customers because L&T wants to become a Rs 50,000 crore ($12 billion) company in 5 to 6 years. If you want to bag huge projects in the private sector they go by faith and not tenders. Like the Delhi airport did not go for competitive bidding. It was their belief that only L&T could deliver. (The day after the interview, L&T also bagged GVK’s second Mumbai airport project.)

Otherwise you bring a multinational not used to working in India. In Hyderabad, Grandhi Mallikarjuna Rao (founder chairman of GMR Group) experienced it. We were only constructing there, the rest of the work was done by a multinational. They ran away or whatever. The promoters obviously didn’t want to repeat it again and so we got the order in Delhi.

We are bidding for huge power projects. In the next 5 years we want to develop turnkey projects of 8 mw to10,000 mw. That’s why we have the Mitsubishi joint venture for a super critical boiler plant. Our turbine joint venture is a toss up between Toshiba and Mitsubishi. (A week after the interview Mitsubishi was finalised.)