Monday, July 16: With more and more diseases being reported from all across the globe, concern is centering on how well prepared the pharmaceuticals industry, the government, and hospitals are to react to outbreaks. One thing is clear, the supply-chain systems will be the most vital elements in determining how well we keep this in check and, that would, in turn, mean making efforts to support the quick and efficient delivery of vaccines and antibiotics to combat anthrax, smallpox, and other diseases.

In fact, the US government has vendor-managed inventory contracts with drug manufacturers and medical-supplies manufacturers to manage the buildup of antibiotics and other necessities in eight warehouses around the country to help in the fight against bio terrorism, Already the hospital personnel make rounds to every floor of each of the 10 hospitals in New York city about every four hours to count the drug supplies that have been used since the last round. This data is recorded by a handheld computer, transmitted to a dedicated PC in each hospital, and sent via electronic data interchange to Allegiance Corp., which books the order and routes it in real time to a Romulus, Michigan warehouse. There, an automated inventory picking system pulls each item in each hospital's order and stacks it in a sequence that lets high-priority items be pulled first and delivered immediately.

However, none of these efforts will really pay unless the pharmaceutical companies don't have the manufacturing and IT systems in place to quickly produce and track antibiotics on a large scale. Bayer Corp., maker of the anthrax-fighting antibiotic Ciprofloxacin, has shipped 50 million Cipro tablets in the past month, more than twice its monthly average. It's looking at tripling manufacturing and packaging capabilities to meet the government's demand of 200 million Cipro tablets over the next three months. Bayer said last week that it would consider seeking help from competitors to handle the demand.

Although the pharmaceutical companies are not very clear as to what could be the possible role of IT systems in these efforts, there are few who claim that with an ever-increasing demand the drug manufacturers are likely to work on inventory-management systems so they can ship medications as soon as they're manufactured (rather than test each batch for quality first), mark them as quarantined at the warehouse, and then notify the government when testing is complete so that the quarantine can be finally lifted.

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Monday, July 9: Computer fraud and abuse is on the rise in the public sector, a report by the public watchdog, the Audit Commission, has found.

The number of computer fraud cases has doubled, up from 8% of cases in 2001 to 16% in 2004. The watchdog said there was a "culture of complacency", despite improved security arrangements.

The report by the Audit Commission is based on an online survey carried out in October and November 2004.

In one incident, an employee manipulated the payment system to create a fake invoice and obtain a cheque for £20,280. In another, a worker tinkered with spreadsheets to steal £22,826 over three years.

The problems could get worse, with technologies such as wireless internet access and handheld computers posing new security headaches.

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Monday, July 02: According to research firm IDC, the Indian IT market is likely to touch $65 billion by 2009, posting a compounded annual growth rate of 21%.

"The Indian IT market crossed the $25-billion mark in 2004. This included a contribution of $16.7 billion from exports and $8.5 billion from the domestic market. This is the best performance by the domestic industry after the technology market bounced back from the slowdown," said the Country Manager, IDC.

The IT exports grew by 32% in 2004 touching $167.7 million in revenue. Services exports clocked $113 million whereas ITES and hardware exports clocked $54 million. The growth came primarily from BPO services, which grew by 42% in 2004.

The domestic market grew by 22.9% over 2003 and the growth primarily came from IT services (26%), PCs (25%), datacom products (32%) and multi-function devices (48%).

The high growth categories for the five-year period identified by IDC are hardware comprising notebook PCs, digital cameras, smart handheld devices, wireless LAN equipment and other new kinds of peripheral devices; software comprising security software, business intelligence software, system management software, information and data management software and storage software; and services including enterprise-wide outsourcing, network consulting and integration, software support, and system integration.

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Monday, June 25: Microsoft Research will open a laboratory in Bangalore, India, the company's third research installation overseas and a sign of India's increasing importance in tech.

The lab, set to open in January, will initially focus on four areas: multilingual systems, technology for emerging markets, geographical information systems and sensor networks. Over time, however, the direction of the lab's research will be largely determined by the people it recruits.

In the past few years, the Redmond, Wash., software giant has become more active in immersing itself in emerging markets. It has released budget versions of the Windows XP operating system in Thailand, for example, as well as specially priced software bundles for educational institutions in developing countries.

Although the lab will work on projects with global impacts, two of the initial areas of research--multilingual systems and technology for developing nations--will nonetheless dovetail to a certain extent with some day-to-day tech problems many Indians face. There are 15 official languages in India, and that doesn't count English, one of the most important languages for government and business. Additionally, there are variants, such as Hindustani, according to the Central Intelligence Agency's World FactBook. The research conducted by the lab will focus on machine translation and on software for allowing users to more easily access information written in different languages on the same computer.

Rapid PC growth, combined with a fairly low per capita income, has also made India a popular place to try out cheap PCs that require little training. Hewlett-Packard has tested solar power printers and cameras in India. Advanced Micro Devices, meanwhile, is promoting what it calls the Personal Internet Communicator, a $185 PC, on the subcontinent.

Geographical information systems revolve around better managing data about the Earth. In this field, Microsoft has developed SkyServer and TerraServer to enable scientists to share astronomical and geological data. Erected in 1998, TerraServer gets 20 million hits a day.

Other companies, such as GeoFusion and MetaCarta, meanwhile, are looking at ways to correlate information in databases to points on a map. In this way, users can get a visual image of complex or lengthy sets of data: Data-feeds from a tagged tuna become a line on a map, while police reports can be plotted by time and space to reconstruct a person's movements.

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Monday, June 18: Tata Consultancy Services, India's No. 1 software maker, announced on Tuesday annual revenue of $2.24 billion for the fiscal year but said growth was flat in the final quarter.

Net profit for Tata's fourth quarter, which ended March 31, was $510 million, up 38 percent from the previous year, the company said. However, revenue growth was flat compared with the third quarter, TCS officials said. The company employs about 45,000 workers in India and at its offshore operations.

The lower-than-expected last-quarter results of the Mumbai-based outsourcing company follow the first-quarter guidance issued by another leading software company, Infosys, last week.

The lower earnings of Indian software companies are being linked to a slowdown in business due to compliance issues in the U.S. TCS earned almost 60 percent of its revenue from North and South America in the year ended March 31, compared with 62 percent in the previous year. About 14 percent of its international revenue came from one American client, General Electric, alone. This is down from the 14.8 percent revenue it earned from GE last year.

TCS attributed the shrinking revenue from the American market to its strategy to focus more on European markets. The company, which faced opposition in the U.S. in the past, has diversified into new markets, including China. Last week, Chinese Prime Minister Wen Jiabao visited the company's software factory at Bangalore.

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