Vishal Sikka - A CEO in India to watch out

Infosys is one of the popular faces of Indian IT services for more than Two decates. When started in 1981 by seven friends with an initial capital of Rs.10,000, even the founders wouldn't have expected that the company will reach such big heights.

But it's been downslide for Infosys since 2012. More about the beginning of downfall here. From 2012, every quaterly update from company recited again that the company is in downfall. Situation went so worse that the even called Mr.N.R.Narayana Murthy, their legendary CEO and one of the founders, back on board for some fruitful results. He reduced the downfall speed but even he couldn't stop it.
Stock prices went down. Hike / Benefitiaries for employees are reduced. Layouts happened. Many employees volunteerly left the company.

Then came Mr.Vishal Sikka. Founder of iBrain and Bodha.com, SAP's former CTO, stepped into CEO shoes in Infosys by June 2014.

It's been more than an year now for Sikka as CEO and it is clearly visible that he indeed did his job well.
Including Q4 2015 results (which came out in March 31, 2015), it has been increase in stock price as well as profit for Infosys in every Quater since his entry as CEO. After 2014, there was no layout in Infosys and there are incidents where employees got 100% hike! (I wouldn't have believed that if I haven't spoke to my friends who are in that list)

Even today (August 20, 2015), Vishal Sikka announced 3 new services that will be provided by Infosys to their customers. This 3 service bundle has been branded as ' Aikido ', which is also the name of a Japanese Martial Art. The 3 services are Platforms (Ai), Knowledge-based IT (Ki), Design thinking (Do). Platform services includes Panaya which has been acquired by Infosys earlier this year for $200M.

By ensuring growth in all sectors, including the services provided by the company, Vishal Sikka is trying to take Infosys to bigger heights. With what he had accomplished over past one year, he is surely a CEO from who we can expect more in near future.

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Mozilla loses its head

Mozilla is getting an internal hit again. This time is the resignation of their CTO, Andreas Gal.

 
Andreas Gal is the man responsible for Mozilla's big projects - Firefox browser and Firefox OS. He is an expert in JavaScript programming language which plays a major role in Web Programming. He joined Mozilla in 2008, made his way through the organization and became CTO back in April 2014.

Gal is moving out of Mozilla to start his own company. He is in plan for a IOT (Internet Of Things) startup along with two of his Mozilla colleagues. 

Previously Brendan Eich, co-founder of Mozilla as well as creator of JavaScript programming language moved out of Mozilla last year(2014). He moved due to political issues caused because of his donation to an anti-gay marriage cause back in 2008. Chris Beard was appointed as CEO after Eich. It was Eich who appointed Gal as CTO.

This is a big hit for Mozilla as they have lost two of their big fishes in two consecutive years. With competitors coming up everyday, tough time ahead for Mozilla.

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Pilotless Flight

Yes.. That is what Google want to do. One more crazy idea from Google X.

Self-driving cars are not the only thing that Google has been working on automation in transport. Project Wing of Google Inc. experiments the same thing with air vehicles. This project has been around for more than two years now. Last year, a testing on single-wing drone has been done in Australia. Though it passed the test of delivering packages to farmers, the design was scrapped. But that didn't stop the experimental cargo-drone team from working furthur.

Recently Dave Vos, head of Google's Project Wing, stated that they want to go beyond drones. Their vision is to automate planes (even commercial passenger planes). 

So if the self-driven cars hit the road and become success, experts say we can expect self-driven flights in next 6 to 8 years.

Though experts believe that self-driven flights will be available within the above mentioned time window, I guess it will take some more time than that.

The self-driven cars of Google are not into market completely. Currently only four states in U.S allow driver-less cars to enter their streets for testing. Google haven't released the fully functioning car yet. So it will take some time for self-driven cars to root well among us. If things go well with cars, then flight idea will be easy for them. If not, then they will have a hard time convincing people about autonomous products.

Moreover the risk is greater in space than in roads. Road is just two dimensional. It's been almost 7 years now (self-driving car project started in 2008) and Google couldn't come up with the product yet. This explains the complexity in work. Now comes space, which is three dimensional. So it will take more time to deal with the increased complexity. 


According to me self-driven flights will be my kids' transport medium. The next generation will use this tech, if things go good :)

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Microsoft meets Linux - Positively

Recently Microsoft CEO created a buzz in computer world by stating that 'Microsoft loves Linux'. It's been quite some time but still people can't believe what they have heard !

Now comes another shock. Microsoft is going to enter the Linux desktop world, with it's new Linux flavor which will be called 'Miux'.

Looks like the two great rivals are going to join paths very soon. We still remember what the former CEO of Microsoft, Steve Ballmer said about Linux - 'Linux is a cancer'. But with new head, new thoughts have arrived in Microsoft. Now they are working with a technology which they have been attacking for years!

This Miux is expected to have advantages of Linux kernel and Microsoft's interface. So there will be reduced security vulnerabilities, faster performance and no requirement for restart on every update on seeing from Windows part. From Linux part, the advantage will be better UI and bigger reach in desktop market. Other than that I couldn't find any real advantage for Linux in this partnership. It will be more advantage for Windows rather than Linux.

Will it be free? Of course it will not be. I don't expect Microsoft to give away their work for free without any advantage for them. According to sources, it might be as much as half of what they charge for Windows.

With Windows 10 ready to hit the market real soon, this announcement from Microsoft made tech world to focus eyes on Microsoft more curiously. 




PS: Article based on information from itsfoss.com, zdnet.com and Microsoft's blog.

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Why Windows 10 might help MS bounce back

Windows has been the ruler of Operating Systems for long time. But recently other operating systems especially Linux flavors like Ubuntu, Red Hat, etc are taking up the market and giving big competition to Windows. With their last OS not being a big success (Windows 8), it is important for Microsoft to bounce back with Windows 10. As this is the first OS release after Nadella became CEO of MS, there is a big expectation as what he will bring to the market.

The Windows event on 21st Jan stood up to the expectations. They revealed many other products like holographic glass along with first look to Windows 10.

How Windows 10 will give big competition to the growing OSs ?

First time in their history, MS is giving away Windows 10 for free ! Even though not completely free, this is not their style. MS will give Windows 10 to Win 7 and Win 8 home users for one year without cost. 
This is more like trail and pay. Once the users get used to the OS, they are more likely to pay for it. This free try will create a huge hype for Windows 10.

As expected, Windows 10 will come out with new browser. Its been confirmed in the event that Spartan will come with Windows 10. To know more about Spartan, click here .

Cortana, the intelligent personal assistant available with Windows Phone 8.1, will now be available with Windows 10 for PC. This will be bigger and better than the Cortana available already.

Windows 8 went down because the new metro look of it got mixed reactions. Traditional / naive users missed start button theme while app lovers liked the metro look more. To satisfy both, Windows 10 will come up with a start button and along with traditional start menu, metro app look will also be present.


With new look, new browser, intelligent PA and a holographic glass to make PA experience better, Windows 10 will become the spearhead for Microsoft to tackle all their recent disappointments and competitors.

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Demand for Backdoor in Encrypted Msg Apps

British Prime Minister David Cameron is the person responsible for the title. It was the UK PM who demands for Backdoor in Encrypted message applications.

In an Election campaign, Cameron stated that if re-elected, he will ban encrypted messaging apps like whatsapp, snapchat, etc if they didn't provide a backdoor for government into the conversations of their customers.

He stated that this demand of him was due to the recent attack by terrorists on Charlie Hebdo magazine in France.
He insists encrypted messaging applications to provide a backdoor to Government so that it will be easy for the Government to prevent such disasters from happening or to trace the culprits.

But he also assured that such inspection into someone's messages will require personally signed order from home secretary.
Applications like Whatsapp didn't respond to this statement by Cameron. Looks more like they will stick to their privacy policies.

This is not the first time such backdoor to encrypted message applications is coming to news.
According to documents released by Edward Snowden, NSA has backlinks to applications like Skype. This issue rocked USA for a long time and is still under debate whether such monitoring is ethical or not.

Now also there are mixed reactions for this statement from David Cameron.
Some people oppose this idea saying that it is a threat to privacy of common people.
Some people support it because it puts National interest first.

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