GHMC లో చెత్త పనులకు చెక్ !

Bloom fuel cell: Individual power plant in a box

By Sharon Gaudin

At a news conference attended by California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and former Secretary of State Colin Powell, a Silicon Valley start-up today took the wraps off a fuel cell designed to enable individual homes and businesses to generate their own power.

Bloom Energy Corp. showed off the Bloom Energy Server , which is being billed as a game changer for the clean energy industry. The solid oxide fuel cell is built to generate electricity with a mixture of oxygen and renewable or traditional fuels -- all without creating any emissions.

"Bloom Energy is dedicated to making clean, reliable energy affordable for everyone in the world," said K.R. Sridhar, principal co-founder and CEO of Bloom Energy. "We believe that we can have the same kind of impact on energy that the mobile phone had on communications. Just as cell phones circumvented landlines to proliferate telephony, Bloom Energy will enable the adoption of distributed power as a smarter, localized energy source."

Sridhar noted that 20 corporate big hitters, including FedEx, Wal-Mart, Staples, eBay and Google already are using Bloom Boxes. Today's news conference was held at eBay's San Jose headquarters.

Google spokeswoman Niki Fenwick said in an e-mail to Computerworld that the search giant has been using four Bloom Boxes at the company's Mountain View headquarters for the past 18 months.

"The boxes are a permanent purchase," Fenwick wrote today. "We may expand our use of the fuel cells in the future, but we don't have anything to announce at this time.... We're always on the lookout for opportunities to power our operations with clean and economic power and willing to try innovative new things, and we've been pleased with our Bloom Energy experience."

She added that the four Bloom Boxes make up a 400-kilowatt installation for Google. And over the last year and a half, the project has had 98% availability and delivered 3.8 million kilowatt hours of electricity.

While Fenwick declined to say what Google paid for the boxes, Bloom Energy said each commercial-sized box costs between $700,000 and $800,000.

eBay noted today that the Bloom Boxes it's using take 15% of the campus' energy needs off the grid completely. The company has been using five Bloom Boxes on its San Jose campus for the past nine months, according to a release from the company.

"eBay believes in the power of our business model to make a real difference in the world, and that includes how we embrace innovation to reduce our carbon footprint," eBay CEO John Donahoe said. "When Bloom came to us, it was an easy decision to become an early adopter of its cutting-edge new technology. As a result, we're meeting financial and environmental goals with the project, while fueling a more energy efficient global marketplace. That's good for us, our customers and the planet."

Sridhar said he's also hoping to see Bloom Boxes become a common fixture in people's backyards and basements before 2020. He estimated the cost of systems for individual homes at about $3,000.

"This is certainly interesting technology and, at least from what I've seen, is the first fuel cell that is deployable now and not just a scaled up lab experiment," said Dan Olds, an analyst with The Gabriel Consulting Group. "They cite a three-to-five-year payback on capital investment via energy cost savings, which is a great number. But without knowing the lifespan of the unit or maintenance costs, it really doesn't tell us the whole story."

Olds also noted that Bloom Energy is contending that its fuel cells have a 2-to-1 efficiency advantage over electric utilities.

"If that's true, then this could potentially be a big win for everyone," he said. "In fact, those electric utilities may be lining up to buy the first units off the production line. The capital cost alone, not to mention the environmental costs, associated with building massive power plants is massive. If utilities could use Bloom technology to add capacity cheaply and site it closer to their customers to cut transmission loss, then it's certainly something they will pursue."

Sharon Gaudin covers the Internet and Web 2.0, emerging technologies, and desktop and laptop chips for Computerworld . Follow Sharon on Twitter at @sgaudin or subscribe to Sharon's RSS feed . Her e-mail address is sgaudin@computerworld.com .

Read more about hardware in Computerworld's Hardware Knowledge Center.

Original story - http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9161978/Bloom_fuel_cell_Individual_power_plant_in_a_box

ముప్పాళ్ళ మండలానికి అరుదైన అవకశం !

జాతీయ స్థాయిలో ఒకే పాఠ్య ప్రణాళిక ఒకే ప్రవేశ పరీక్ష !

పొలమే పెట్టుబడి - రైతే వ్యాపారి !

It Takes a Village: The Rise of Rural BPO

It Takes a Village: The Rise of Rural BPO

Published: February 11, 2010 in India Knowledge@Wharton

"Do you really think women can work on computers?" Men in Bagar genuinely wanted to know the answer to that question when Source for Change -- an initiative of the Mumbai-based Piramal Foundation -- set up an all-women BPO (business process outsourcing) center in this small village in India's Rajasthan state. The skepticism didn't end even after Source for Change selected 10 women from 25 applicants in August 2007. Wary men would accompany their wives or daughters to the training center and then wait around until they were ready to return home.

More than two years later, men still drop in unannounced at the remodeled house that serves as Source for Change's combined headquarters and training center. But these are not the same suspicious husbands and fathers. Instead, they are individuals hoping to find jobs for the women in their families. "They realized that we made available the two most valued symbols of social status here: English and computers," says Karthik Raman, head of business development for Source for Change. "Some of the women who work here earn more than the men in their families. They now have a voice at the table."

With state governments and industry supporting the cause, it is clear that village-level BPO is here to stay. No official numbers are available yet -- the National Association of Software and Services Companies (Nasscom) is collecting data now -- but observers agree that more than 100 such units are likely operating around India, most of them less than three years old.

It's a positive development, according to Raju Bhatnagar, vice president in charge of BPOs and government relations at Nasscom. "There is tremendous opportunity for non-urban BPOs in domestic voice [i.e., call centers] and non-voice businesses, and international non-voice work." Nasscom prefers the term "non-urban" to "village" or "rural" because prospective clients may associate rural with "backward." "[It is] semantics, I know, but the change in terminology does seem to help people get over that mind-set," Bhatnagar says.

Some BPO centers are run from non-air-conditioned buildings that double as schools and marriage halls. Their employees sit on plastic, stackable chairs and rush home to milk the cows when their shifts end. Others are run from modern offices where biometric IDs are required for entry and team leaders hold post-graduate degrees. Their common element is their location far from the big cities, in semi-urban and rural communities such as Ethakota in Andhra Pradesh state, Munnar in Kerala state and Shiggaon in Karnataka state. More than half the employees are women, and all employees are from 19 to 35 years old.

The Bottom Line: Cost

Why are non-urban BPOs on the rise? "To ease some of the pain points that exist in the domestic outsourcing business around cost and reach," says Gaurav Gupta, principal and India head of the Everest Group consultancy.

Over the last few years, India's US$14 billion BPO industry seemed to have been losing a battle with rising expenses. Real estate prices were spiraling out of control. Off-the-charts attrition meant increases not only in salaries but also in training and recruitment costs. To curb people costs, many companies cast their recruiting nets further into the hinterland, but found that fewer than one in three short-listed candidates would sign on. The costs of city living did not make the move worth it for many, while family ties held back others. Raman Roy, chairman and managing director of BPO firm Quattro and a veteran industry leader, points out that BPO recruitment has changed over the last few years. "About 60% to 70% happens in smaller towns, where the BPO doesn't have a presence. And of those selected, just 20% to 27% accept; the rest don't move for [a variety of] reasons."

All of this is bad news for an industry whose existence relies on cost-effectiveness. "The main drivers of this industry have been higher efficiency, infrastructural support and available skill-sets," says Rajanish Dass, professor of information systems and strategic management at the Indian Institute of Management Ahmedabad (IIMA). "But the bottom line has been the cost savings that a BPO brings. On average, the cost savings incurred by deploying a BPO is 40% to 50% compared to the originating companies." By that token, organizations with an eye on the cost-benefit ratio will not hesitate to switch operators or even countries if expenses reach a tipping point.

Dass notes that BPO companies have the option of evolving into knowledge-process outsourcing units, tackling specialized, high-end jobs while shifting low-margin, low-skill data entry projects to rural BPO centers. And by moving jobs to rural areas, companies and clients can take advantage of significantly reduced operating costs. Land prices in India's interior are a small fraction of prices in Mumbai and Bangalore, and even in satellite towns such as Gurgaon and Noida. And salaries in rural set-ups -- about US$100 a month for an eight-hour shift five days a week -- are about half of what call centers in the cities pay. "It may not sound like much, but US$75 to US$85 a month is huge for a rural housewife, especially when it's neither project-based nor seasonal, like agricultural income," say Manoj Vasudevan, CEO of SourcePilani, which runs a 50-seat BPO center in Rajasthan's Pilani district.

Access to female employees is an important reason rural India makes sense. Not only are women equally adept at handling IT tasks, they have proved to be more loyal employees. "The already-low attrition rates can be brought down even further by employing women. They are less likely to move away to urban areas," says Raman of Source for Change.

There's the greater good to consider as well, experts note. Through job creation in villages and semi-urban areas, migration to cities can be reduced. As a result, disposable income among lower-income groups increases and villages are provided a means of sustainable development.

Ambitious Rural BPOs

Most companies setting up BPO operations in rural India operate as third-party service providers to multiple clients. A few, though, are captive back-office centers for big companies. In July 2008, HDFC Bank set up a BPO center at Tirupati in Andhra Pradesh state through its subsidiary Atlas Documentary Facilitators. The center's approximately 550 employees are involved in non-core operations, such as data capturing and indexing of customer details -- work that was previously handled by more than 1,000 employees in Mumbai and Chennai. The center handles 22,000 applications a day at the rate of 100 applications a person in an eight-hour shift.

The Tata Group, meanwhile, aims to hire 5,000 people for rural BPO operations over the next few years. Called Uday, the BPO centers are an initiative of the community services arm of group company Tata Chemicals. Already, more than 200 people are employed at two BPO centers at Mithapur in Gujarat state and Babrala in Uttar Pradesh state. The Babrala call center functions as back office logistic support for Tata Indicom customers in Uttar Pradesh.

The Uday centers and HDFC Bank's BPO branch are exceptions. Typically, rural BPO outlets are small -- with 25 to 50 seats -- and don't have the luxury of big clients. Consider DesiCrew: The Tamil Nadu state-based BPO was incubated in 2005 by the Indian Institute of Technology, Chennai's Rural Technology Business Incubator, and used the network created by the Indian government's Common Service Center initiative, which aims to set up one computer in each village across the country. Eight months into the project, though, DesiCrew's founder and CEO, Saloni Malhotra, realized it wasn't working. Security, professionalism and reliable infrastructure had become insurmountable issues.

Next up was a franchise arrangement under which a franchisee was responsible for the infrastructure while DesiCrew brought in the work. That didn't work, either. "It was probably an idea ahead of its time," Malhotra says. "The franchisee wanted commitments on work before investing in the business; the client wanted to see an established unit before offering work." The solution meant investing US$55,000 to US$160,000 in each center. DesiCrew Solutions was spun off as a commercial entity in February 2007 with three employees each in four units. But it didn't get its first big client until the end of that year. "We took any work that came our way, even if it was worth just US$20 or US$25," Malhotra recalls.

Since then, the company has grown to employ close to 100 people. The individual units broke even in mid-2008, and the company started making money in 2008-2009. By the end of 2010, DesiCrew plans to expand its workforce to 1,000 people and establish a pan-India presence.

Other rural BPO outfits are equally ambitious. Vasudevan of SourcePilani, for instance, wants to increase headcount to 100 by the end of the year and then sell the franchise to a village cooperative. That way, he will recover the US$100,000 invested in setting up the BPO center, and he will earn a 15% royalty from SourcePilani's future operations. "This is also a great way to bind people to the organization. With a 100-seat unit, each employee-owner should get an extra US$40 every month as their share of the profit," he says.

Surmountable Obstacles

It's not going to be easy, though. Rural BPO centers are dogged by problems that are not going away soon. Foremost is infrastructure. Power in the hinterlands ranges from erratic to nonexistent, with entire villages still awaiting electrification. So, any prospective BPO needs to budget for a heavy-duty diesel generator. To be fair, that's an expense for most BPOs even in urban locations.

Broadband connectivity is another hurdle -- though it, too, can be surmounted. "Bandwidth and connectivity are constraints if you take the country as a whole, but if you're looking to target finite locations, there will be acceptable connectivity within striking distance," says Nasscom's Bhatnagar. Besides, non-voice BPO work has a lower requirement for broadband. Periodic updates of data work are sufficient, so real-time connectivity is less of an issue.

The issue of community acceptance can also be tackled relatively easily if BPO firms partner with NGOs and local government departments familiar with an area. HDFC Bank, for instance, joined forces with the employment generation and marketing mission of the department of rural development in Andhra Pradesh to identify potential employees for its Tirupati BPO. Source for Change got buy-in from locals because of its association with the Piramal Foundation; Bagar is the ancestral village of the Piramal family. And SourcePilani had the backing of the Goenka Foundation as well as the premier Birla Institute of Technology and Science (located in Pilani) to ease its way.

Getting the right people and overcoming market skepticism are much harder problems to solve -- but they are more critical to BPO success. Managers at rural BPO centers acknowledge that recruitment is a much bigger deal for them than it is for their urban competitors. "We need really smart people so that our clients have one reason less to go elsewhere," says DesiCrew's Malhotra, who says she takes on board only one in about 45 applicants. Adds Vasudevan, "We need to get the recruiting right the first time; the community may not accept you if you goof up initially."

Naturally, training is more intensive than in urban BPO centers. What is taught also varies considerably. Source for Change's Raman recalls that some women didn't know how to turn on a computer. Most rural BPOs require basic educational qualifications, usually high school graduation. They don't insist on fluency in English, but do seek some proficiency in the language, including the ability to sound out words, even if the meaning is unclear. Where a gap exists in formal qualifications, testing for logic and abstract thinking may occur, since concepts like "file" and "folder" may be difficult to grasp for someone unfamiliar with computers. Immersion training in computer applications, English language comprehension and grammar, and speech and etiquette are now standard practice at most BPO outfits. Still, it may take two to four months before an employee is ready to tackle basic work such as data entry.

Low-hanging Fruit

Typically, rural BPO centers begin by offering basic digitization services such as data entry and data conversion. But even getting that level of business can be an uphill task. NGO connections can help rural outfits tap into extensive networks of companies willing to contract work to these centers as part of their corporate social responsibility initiatives, but it's still not easy. Companies need to constantly pitch for clients -- proving their capabilities, emphasizing their infrastructure (building in redundancies in power and broadband are, therefore, musts) and pushing the cost-value advantage.

Once clients come on board, though, BPO industry observers recommend quickly offering value-added services. Plain vanilla data work may be a starting point, but most clients will soon look for an outsourcing partner who can offer them extras such as data analysis, report preparation, and graphics and layout services. If rural BPO outfits can't build those capabilities in-house, it may be worthwhile to partner with urban centers that can offer the services. "Infrastructure and technology are seen as challenges, but these can be tackled easily. It is more critical to show clients that you have a process that can be repeated, duplicated and scaled up," says Quatrro's Roy.

Because voice work is still somewhat difficult for rural BPOs, many are experimenting with other kinds of services. SourcePilani, for instance, may be the only non-urban BPO that does medical transcription work. DesiCrew has undertaken web site content creation and validation, GIS-based mapping and transcription work. SourcePilani now also offers social media marketing services. It manages accounts for clients on social networks such as Facebook and Twitter, providing regular updates on industry and company events, products and special offers. "There's a huge market for this internationally," says Vasudevan.

Source for Change is also trying out different avenues. It has done web research projects, transcription and translation work, and is now running a job web site as well. Raman is keen on pursuing Hindi-based voice work and has already done a pilot project for a client.

Will rural BPO centers succeed in India? Everest Group's Gupta is convinced they will be "relevant." IIMA's Dass says the domestic BPO business is large enough to make rural BPOs viable. So why haven't more clients signed on? Nasscom's Bhatnagar believes there may be a herd mentality at work among client companies. "No one wants to be the first [to opt for a rural BPO]. But success stories build on themselves, and there are already successes to be seen."

A beginning made in the right direction !

A beginning made in the right direction

Posted by: "thiagarajan.arunachalam@gmail.com" thiagarajan.arunachalam@gmail.com

Wed Feb 10, 2010 3:39 am (PST)

Source: The Hindu (http://www.hinduonnet.com/2010/02/09/stories/2010020959100400.htm)
Andhra Pradesh

A beginning made in the right direction

Staff Reporter

Efforts to shun plastic at the NGO, individual level are commendable

HYDERABAD: They are islands of action in ocean of apathy. Some take inspiration from them, while some others find them snobbish and self-righteous. Whatever they are, they should be commended for the steadfast determination with which they hate plastic and campaign against it. Deserving first mention is Viajayaram, the famed ‘mithaiwallah’ of Emerald Sweets near Indira Park. Setting himself as example, he shunned plastic from his life and business. At his shop, customers get sweets with no colours or toxic content, and carry them home in a paper bag or a cloth one.
Mr. Vijayaram engaged ten of his workers to make bags out of newspapers and cardboard. However, the endeavour has proved to be not only expensive, but also cumbersome.
"To address this problem, I have introduced a scheme, whereby customers carrying their own bags will get a 4 per cent discount on total purchase",says Mr. Vijayaram. Also an artist, he uses the weekend drawing classes to spread awareness among children.
B. Ramakrishna Reddy, working as Auditor in State Bank of Hyderabad, is another enviro-savvy plastic-hater. Taking time from his schedule, he goes on door-to-door campaign about the harmful effects of plastic.
"I began this endeavour after reading a news item about a cow’s stomach yielding 40 kilograms of plastic", says Mr.Reddy.

Cold response

Very few people are unaware of the effort by the Exnora groups in various localities of the city. Striving towards zero waste management in the city are NGOs such as Sukuki Exnora and Jubilee Hills Civic Exnora (JHCE). Indira Lingam, the President of JHCE sounds pessimistic about people’s response in shunning plastics. Their project in Jubilee Hills of introducing paper bags, and two-bin mode of garbage disposal received a cold response, she says. On the contrary, Major Shivkiran from Sukuki Exnora that covers areas around Begumpet, sounds hopeful. He has been successful in implementing the two-bin system in about 20,000 households. Also, about 3,000 quarters in Ordnance Factory are going to adopt the zero waste management model proposed by them. Pragathi Nagar, the ISO-certified Panchayat that has done away with plastic covers is another isolated example of success.

Children - Good Food - Health

IT BPO Market in Rise !

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Students make electric appliances operable via sms

Students make electric appliances operable via sms

Bangalore: Your electrical appliances at home can soon be controlled by a simple SMS, thanks to a new 'low cost device' developed by the students at Zakir Hussain College of Engineering and Technology in Aligarh, Uttar Pradesh.The device, which was developed by Abdullah Azhar and Kamal Gupta, both final year B.Tech students of Department of Electronics, will enable users to operate electrical appliances at their home from anywhere in the world at any time at a very low cost, a college spokesman said.

According to him, existing technologies for home automation require internet, Bluetooth and wi-fi systems, which are comparatively expensive, reports PTI. The device has also won the second prize at the international exhibition of 'Electrical and Industrial Electronics' held in Mumbai recently.

Career Counselling ..What after ??

Green Living - Great Performance of Green Song !

Exams Preparation - Planning is the Key