Bharti Airtel, India’s leading telecom services provider, along with eight major leaders of the global telecommunications industry has signed a formal Construction and Maintenance Agreement in Rome today to build a high-capacity fiber-optic submarine cable that stretches from India to France via the Middle East. The cable system, known as I-ME-WE (India, Middle East, Western Europe) is the fifth in the series of similar cable systems which includes the SEA-ME-WE series.
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Pangea3, the global leader in legal process outsourcing to U.S., European and Japanese corporations and law firms, today announced the opening of a 16,000 square foot facility in the Andheri district of Mumbai, India. This is in-line with Pangea3’s aggressive expansion and recruitment plans post the $7 million funding by Sequoia Capital. Read more

The Associated Chambers of Commerce and Industry of India (ASSOCHAM) has
recommended standardization of Open XML (Extensible Markup Language) along
with other standards like Open Document Format (ODF) with a view to enhance
competition for the benefit of consumers and advancement of technology in
the IT industry.

In a communication to the IT Ministry, the ASSOCHAM President, Mr.
Venugopal N. Dhoot has stated that the Indian IT industry works on and
provides support on multiple technologies domestically and internationally,
keeping in mind the benefit of consumers. This has served us well so far
and India should continue to encourage multiple standards and pursuer
technological neutrality. Adding Open XML to the library of standards
enhances the choice available to users and benefits the country in the long
run.

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NASSCOM, the premier trade body and the voice of the Indian IT-BPO industry today released the report ‘The Rising Remote Infrastructure Management Opportunity: Establishing India’s Leadership’. The report summarises the findings of the study conducted over the last six months by McKinsey & Company, the leading management consulting firm. The report details the potential of the RIM industry by 2013, the forces that have, and will propel it, and articulates the impact RIM is likely to have on the infrastructure management business and its customers. The conference was addressed by Som Mittal, President, NASSCOM, Vivek Pandit, Partner, McKinsey & Company and Vineet Nayar, CEO – HCL Technologies, & Chairman, NASSCOM – RIM Forum. Read more

IBM (NYSE: IBM) today unveiled an expanded business strategy and roadmap—bolstered by the company’s acquisition of Cognos—to help clients unlock the business value of information and use it for competitive advantage to address emerging, industry-specific business opportunities.

Today’s announcement features an array of new and enhanced joint IBM-Cognos solutions, products and services from across the company that enable organizations of all sizes to gain better insights from their data, improve decision-making, and optimize business performance, including:

10 new and enhanced IBM solutions for banking, retail, healthcare, government, life sciences and manufacturing industries.

Six pre-integrated IBM-Cognos product offerings that enable companies to use business intelligence to improve overall business performance.

Information on Demand Infrastructure Services to help clients plan, design and deploy a resilient enterprise data, storage and content management environment.

The new offerings extend IBM’s end-to-end portfolio of Information on Demand software, hardware and services.

These capabilities will extend IBM’s ability to provide customers with the right information they need when they need it, along with key business insights to use for competitive advantage in response to changing market demands. “Today, Indian enterprises are fast approaching the technology maturity curve. These enterprises are now looking for ways to leverage their advanced IT systems and the vast pool of real-time data to stand out in their market. IBM is quickly capitalizing its acquisition of Cognos to help deliver this differentiator to clients, said Pradeep Nair, Director, Software Group, IBM India/ SA.

“Thanks to our existing partnership with Cognos, common approach to open standards and complementary portfolios, we’re hitting the ground running,” said Steve Mills, senior vice president and group executive, IBM Software Group. “In the race to use information for real-time decision making, you not only need the right technology, but a global understanding of how information can be used to tackle tough business problems in dozens of industries. The combination of Cognos and IBM software, hardware, business consulting expertise and research investments clearly separate us from competitors.”

IBM’s ability to seamlessly unite its portfolio with Cognos furthers its comprehensive, cross-company Information on Demand business strategy, which was launched in February 2006. The Information on Demand strategy combines IBM’s strengths in software, hardware, research and business consulting services to capture a pressing business opportunity aimed at helping clients better compete in the global economy.
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According to a report on NPRa new cell phone offers the smallest text-to-speech reading device ever built, a device especially useful for people with impaired vision. The phone and software come with a $2,000 price tag.

If you have normal vision and can read, there are thousands of things you do every day without even thinking even about it, little problems you solve with just a glance — like knowing which coffee bag in a hotel is caffeinated or decaf.

James Gashel is blind, but he can get his caffeine fix with help from his cell phone.

“All you have to do is snap a picture of the bag, and it tells you,” he says.

Gashel is showing off his new phone in a hotel ballroom filled with people who have come to check it out. Many are holding white canes, and there’s a guide dog resting by the wall. Everyone listens to the small silver phone as Gashel holds it a few inches above a green rectangle.

“Taking picture … detecting orientation,” a digitized voice from the phone says. “Processing U.S. currency image, please wait … $20.”

The phone is loaded up with software developed by the company Gashel works for — K-NFB Reading Technology, a joint venture between Kurzweil Technologies and the National Federation of the Blind.

Besides reading labels and telling a $20 from a $10, the phone can read pages of printed text.

Reading machines have been around for decades — this company already makes a hand-held device. But this reader is the smallest yet — just 4 ounces and a few inches long. And it’s in a high-end Nokia phone with features like an MP3 player, high-speed data connection and a GPS navigation system.

That’s appealing to people like Mike Hanson, from Minnesota. He uses a desktop reading machine for all kinds of things, including books, mail and bills.

“I’m a lawyer, so I’ll use it to read material related to cases I’m working on,” Hanson says.

But he never wanted a handheld reader before; he saw it as just one more gadget to lug around. This multifunctional cell phone, though, is a different story.

“It’s next on my list of technology items to seriously consider,” he says. Read more here