Great future for Banking customers of i-flex, IBM, Oracle from their alliance

This collaboration will combine IBM’s business & IT architectural leadership, Oracle’s banking-specific application solutions, and core banking and risk solutions from i-flex.


i-flex Solutions on Wednesday said that IBM, Oracle and the company will collaborate to provide joint banking customers with infrastructure, services, and support for enterprise applications, core banking, and risk management.The banking collaboration will combine the business and IT architectural leadership of IBM in banks, banking-specific application solutions from Oracle, and core banking and risk solutions from i-flex. This combination can help banks today, using proven, market-leading solutions in CRM, Core Transaction Processing, Risk, Analytics and Corporate Operations to translate a bank’s business strategies into execution in a timely and effective manner.The companies also announced the launch of Company’s powerful retail banking product, FLEXCUBE, on the IBM System z mainframe platform, delivering world-class performance, reliability and security banks require. Under the companies’ banking alliance, IBM plans to expand its services with Oracle and the Company to help ensure unparalleled integration and support for IBM platforms.”The collaboration represents a unique combination of leading companies to provide a comprehensive and total solution for top tier banks to migrate to the integrated banking applications and platforms of the future,” said R Ravisankar, CEO, International Operations and Business Development, of the Company. “IBM’s proven ability to manage complex systems integration, their experience i-flex applications and phased and evolutionary migration will ensure minimal disruption risk.”

Microsoft to launch new office software by year end

Global IT giant Microsoft Monday previewed its latest office business software, called the 2007 Office System, and said a formal launch of this new set of applications would take place by the end of this year.An improved combination of applications such as word processing, spreadsheets, presentations and other programmes, the 2007 Office System is now available in Beta 2 (preliminary) version that was launched in May this year.“The Beta 2 version of 2007 Office System has been the most popular beta version of Office until now, with over three million downloads worldwide,” said Chris Capossela, corporate vice president of Microsoft.Out of 250 applications developed for the software, 25 have been in partnership with Indian tech firms such as Tata Consultancy Service, Wipro and Sonata, officials with the global software major said.
For example, solutions for product development in association with Sonata help customers in managing the entire process involved in launching a new product - from market research to its final introduction.
The solution designed by Tata Consultancy Services helps in financial reporting, while Wipro’s offerings automate claims management for firms in businesses like insurance, keeping in mind the needs of the mobile workforce, the officials said.
According to Doug Hauger, chief operating officer of Microsoft India, more than 300,000 Beta 2 CDs have been accessed in India. The software will be initially available for Rs.7,000 in the country, officials added.

Google acquires YouTube for $1.65 billion

YouTube went live in December 2005. Today, Google announced it bought the company for $1.65 billion in stock.
The deal, assembled at top speed, will be a stock-for-stock transaction. Following the acquisition, YouTube will operate independently to preserve its successful brand and passionate community.
YouTube will continue to be based in San Bruno, Calif., and all its employees will remain with the company. Closely-held YouTube claims more than 100 million videos are viewed daily on its site, making it the No. 2 video site on the Internet behind MySpace.
Word of the pending deal first surfaced late last week and was promptly lambasted by that shrinking violet Mark Cuban, who called the idea “crazy.”
Google CEO Eric Schmidt told a conference call that “what tipped us over was not the great business success but the vision they had for delivering content to users. It was the same vision in serving their users as Larry and David had in founding Google.”
Google expects to monetize the YouTube content through ad placement, but the details are still being worked out. Schmidt emphasized that Google’s answer to YouTube, Google Video, wasn’t going anywhere.
“Google Video doesn’t go away, ever. Google Video is a valuable part of the Google experience and will become even more integrated with Google in the future,” he said.
The deal is expected to close in the fourth quarter. Google General Counsel David Drummond said the purchase was all-stock instead of the usual cash deal to make it a tax-free transaction.
Analyst reaction was cautious.
“I find myself agreeing with Mark Cuban, but for different reasons,” said Joseph Laszlo, research director with JupiterKagan. “While YouTube has a large audience, they don’t have anything in their technology that’s unique.
Laszlo added, “Google has never bought audiences in the past, so buying YouTube would be a big break for them acting not like a tech company but a media company.”
Google paid an incredibly high price for a property that has yet to generate any appreciable profit, said Rob Enderle, principal analyst with The Enderle Group.
“Google often does things that appear insane and then makes them look brilliant in hindsight. This acquisition certainly hits on the insane part of that formula.”
The day had already started out on an upbeat note for YouTube, having signed deals with CBS, Universal Music Group and Sony BMG Music Entertainment. Google just signed a similar deal of its own to distribute music videos from Warner Music Group.
This comes on top of YouTube’s recent deal with NBC, which is helping avert a problem with copyright concerns.
YouTube lets its users upload pretty much anything and often has to deal with the issue of content after the material has been online.
It helps that the movie and television studios aren’t being as reactionary as the record labels, even though the majority share the same corporate parents.
“The three deals today shows YouTube is trying very hard to prove to media companies that it can be an asset, a helpful thing to them,” Laszlo said.
While music labels sued Napster, LimeWire and Kazaa out of existence, “the folks on the video side maybe sees more opportunity,” Laszlo added.
CBS will have a CBS channel on YouTube’s site, offering news, sports, Showtime and prime-time programming, starting this month. Universal will give YouTube viewers access to thousands of music videos, as will Sony. Sony will also let some songs be used in amateur video uploads on YouTube.

India is “No.1 Developer nation”, says Sadagopan (IIIT Professor,Bangalore)

The Professor urged developers to build programs that last long and admires that we are the number one developer nation
Never mind the argument whether India is a developing nation or a developed nation, the fact is that we are the number one developer nation, said Professor S Sadagopan of the International Institute of Information Technology here amidst rousing cheers from code-crunchers.
He was addressing around 700 software developers at the IBM Rational conference in Bangalore.
The theme of the conference this year is Software in Concert, and quite fittingly speakers at the conference were ushered on to the stage to the sound of rock guitar riffs.
Sadagopan urged developers to build programs that last long. Tracing the changes in the industry from old programming languages from Fortran and Pascal, to todays frameworks, he said that software has to evolve according to the changes in the IT world.

We are moving from products to productized services and from computers to appliances. The ability to program software for a gamut of devices has not happened yet, he said.
The Rational user conference also saw the launch of the latest version of the software in India. Developers got a sneak peek at what they could expect from the new release- support for global distributed development; SoA governance and regulatory and internal compliance features. Version 7 allows for componentization which means you can install optional installable features and specific components for targeted users, said Martin Nally, CTO, Rational Software.
He also gave a small preview of the features of the next release, which promises to offer a collaborative platform. As a precursor to Version 8, the company has announced what it calls its Jazz initiative, a collaborative platform that would leverage on Internet based technologies such as blogs, Wikis, RSS feeds and blogs, thus enabling real-time development platforms.
Rational plans to throw open core components of the work on Jazz to the developer community.

Flock : A New Web Browser

Few days back guys at Flock released a public beta of their much awaited Browser . It was an exciting news for me for two reasons. One i happen to meet with Chris at barcampBangalore and attended his presentation on Micro formats . it was awesome . he was till very recent past associated with this project . Now he is a freelancer doing consulting work .
secondly this project was making a very different and somewhat dramatic bet on the future of browsing as we know it . Since the inception of browsing technology ( Mosaic Onward ) the approach to developing a browser is pretty much standard . browser was more of a gateway. it was done in a more and more generalised fashion . there was no optimization for any application specific or domain specific usage pattern . there was support for ActiveX,XML,Frames but they were not aimed at any particular user base . that means there was no application level optimization there was no specific browser for E-Commerce or for Usenet or blogs or for video . there was a business sense in doing that .of course if you optimize your browser for one user group you run the risk of alienating with the rest of Internet users . since no single user base was big enough to make this kind of effort commercially viable so it was in the best interest of developer to make it as Horizontal as possible .
folck is the first browser with this application layer optimization . they have positioned themselves as a browser for web 2.0 crowd who are neck deep in to social networking and tagging and other such stuff . their tag line says “Browser for You and Your Friends”. with its feature for Blogging, Feed reader and photo sharing it surely have some appeal to this user base . i am hooked on it right now and plan to do so in future but i really wonder how long i can keep up with the inconvenience of using multiple browsers . Maintaining History , Book Marks ,feeds,passwords at two places is too much of work .
its really an interesting experiment . do we really need a separate browser for every kind of browsing we do ? can we all the features of folck be pushed in to FireFox by some extension or some plug gin . is it just an heck an experiment or this is a start of a new trend .well time ahead will be the judge of it . but right now i am captivated by the sleek interface and new features of folck . Kudos to the team .good luck …may the force be with you .