Speedy road to Innovation

S. Mohini Ratna,
Editor - VARINDIA

With the passage of time, interrelationship between technology and business continues to grow and deepen day by day.  Today, both have become inseparable. The need for technology has become all the more vital - thanks to the contribution it has made to business. With the increasing change in the consumer behaviour and the ever-growing appetite for consumer experience, there is a dire need for constant innovation and re-engineering, powered by superior technology, right mix of products and an in-depth understanding of the need of the people across different geographies. So, it has become imperative on the part of every organization which is a player in the entire value chain to offer and deliver the best to their VARs who are the arteries of technology business. This was gleaned from the recently organized panel discussion among the IT associations, IT distributors and IT companies in the 10th VARIndia Star Nite Awards - 2011, where the vendors and VARs were recognized with awards as the “Marketers of the Year”.

As time passes, digital content and e-learning are gaining momentum. This is natural because it is cost-effective - and not time-consuming. This has resulted in organizations spending more on training like never before.

India's success story as an IT software superpower is well known. And the story is no different as far as the telecom sector is concerned. The national Telecom Policy 2011 speaks eloquently about One Nation, One Licence and indigenous manufacturing to promote to meet the growing demand in the telecom sector. According to various estimates, India's Internet users will triple to 300 million from the current 100-million mark over the next couple of years. This will create several opportunities for entrepreneurs and investors for creating innovative business models. With the coming of Dot-Bharat Domain in the imminent future, a revolution is waiting to happen. The move will be set into motion by May 2012, enabling organizations and individuals to register their website addresses in Hindi and later in more regional languages.

Last year, Google initialized to support 14 Indian languages. Nokia and Microsoft are now supporting Hindi fonts. And there are booming blogospheres in Bengali, Kanada, Malayalam, Tamil and other languages.

Though today whether the site is in Hindi (or Gujarati, Punjabi, etc.), the user still enters the domain name in English and which usually has a .com extension. In June, India received approval from the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), which governs domain names internationally to register domain names in seven Indian languages that include Bengali, Gujarati, Hindi, Punjabi, Urdu, Tamil and Telugu.

In the next issue which will mark the end of 2011, we will come out with a new capsule of information...