Apple co-founder Steve Jobs tops list of world‘s best CEOs

Late visionary Apple co-founder Steve Jobs has topped a list of the world's best chief executives, according to a report.

The global list, compiled by French business school Insead for Harvard Business Review, ranked the former Apple head first.

Jobs was followed by Amazon's Jeff Bezos in second and Samsung's retired boss Yun Jong-Yong in third, the Sydney Morning Herald reports.

Jobs topped the list for this year despite passing away in October 2011 as the analysis looked back at the performances of chief executives of big companies between 1995 and August 2012.

The survey of 3143 CEOs, which bases its ranking on returns and market value change, credited Jobs with significantly increasing Apple's long-term value.

The survey said Jobs' posthumous results were even more impressive than when he topped the list three years ago.

According to the paper, the journal said it chose to focus on the chief executives' ability to created long-term value for their companies, rather than what is usually expected of them - short-term financial results.

Skype founder browsing the world for next hot tech idea

Niklas Zennstrom, co-founder of internet phone service Skype, believes the next hot tech business will just as likely spring from Istanbul or Sao Paolo as from Silicon Valley or the coolest districts of London.
And he is prepared to fly around the world to find it.

"Talent can pop up anywhere in the world, it's not just one city block," the Swedish entrepreneur and venture capitalist said at the headquarters of his Atomico fund, based on upmarket New Bond Street in central London.

Zennstrom, who retains faint traces of a Swedish accent despite his years of globetrotting, is looking for start-ups ready to shift up a gear into new markets and has the experience, gained from growing Skype into a service used by millions around the world, to help them.

Skype was sold to eBay in 2005 for roughly $3 billion, before being bought back by a consortium including Zennstrom in 2009 and then two years later sold on to Microsoft for $8.5 billion, leaving him a multi-millionaire.

"If you have a product that works it's important to scale (up) the business as quickly as possible," said Zennstrom, named by Time Magazine in 2006 as one of its 100 most influential people. "As entrepreneurs, usually you may not have that experience; how does Asia work? Europe? Latin America?"

Atomico, founded by Zennstrom in 2006, has invested in companies in northern Europe including Finland-based Rovio, developer of Angry Birds, and Hailo, a London-based startup that has developed an app that connects passengers with taxi drivers and has raised $20 million so far.

It also led a $105 million funding round for US online retailer Fab in July.

Future portfolio

The investment fund, whose London office reception is decked out with simple designer furniture and modern art pieces, has opened offices in Turkey and Brazil, emerging markets with growing middle classes eager to shop online and buy internet services.

Zennstrom wants to make these markets a large part of Atomico's portfolio in future.

The firm in 2011 backed Brazilian online retailers such as car parts supplier Connect Parts and announced a $16 million investment in a Russian online travel agency in October.

Atomico is not necessarily looking for the latest gizmo or internet trend, but savvy businesses with talented leaders who can take advantage of growth in nascent sectors such as e-commerce.

And Zennstrom, softly spoken and wearing an open-necked shirt and dark jacket, believes emerging market growth is fuelling a new breed of optimism and ambition.

"It's a much more of an entrepreneurial spirit (in Turkey and Brazil) compared to southern European where it's a depressed mindset," he said.

Zennstrom earned his stripes in the tech world after helping launch file-sharing service Kazaa more than a decade ago, which failed as a business but paved the way for Skype.

He said getting investment today was far easier than when he was starting Skype. It took him a year to secure funding, whereas today the most talented entrepreneurs with the best ideas could take their pick of investors.

There is also increasing recognition that entrepreneurs might want to realise some of the value of their creations, something he said was lacking when Skype became successful.

"There was really no IPO market and it was not really accepted for founders to sell some of their shares to get some money off the table," he said, adding that before Skype was sold to eBay, he could not even secure a mortgage on an apartment.

"I think we made the right decision for the time in terms of selling (Skype)," he said. "Today as an entrepreneur you have more options."

Infosys to induct junior employees into consulting

India's second-ranked software exporter Infosys said it will begin inducting junior level employees into its consulting division by re-training them. Until now, only senior- and middle-level employees were hired for the vertical.

A junior employee at Infosys has about two-five years experience. Infosys has also decided to rope in those hired from business schools into this division, a high margin business - the recent acquisition of Europe-based consultancy Lodestone pushed revenues up 6.3% sequentially.

"Till now we used to have only middle and senior level employees in the consulting division but expect more projects coming in under consulting segment and have started training juniors in this vertical," said Nandita Gurjar, head of human relations at the Bangalore-based company.

Gurjar said the re-skilling had started two-three months ago and those on the company's bench will be trained for the same.

The firm will be muted in its new hiring till employee utilisation rates go up by another 7-8%, said CEO SD Shibulal. Utilisation rates for the firm in the December quarter hovered around 70.1%.

The human relations head also hinted at muted increments for the information technology industry in the new fiscal. "We have just rolled out a 6-8% raise for our employees and 2-3% for onsite ones in October. As far as industry is concerned, our studies show that their next increment may be half of what we have given," said Gurjar.

Infosys unlike its peers deferred its increments in March-April and announced them in October. Gurjar did not reveal if Infosys will announce another round of hikes in March-April. "We are yet to take a call on that."

Anti-virus products not good enough to beat computer viruses

The anti-virus industry has a dirty little secret: Its products are often not very good at stopping viruses. Consumers and businesses spend billions of dollars every year on anti-virus software. But these programmes rarely, if ever, block freshly-minted computer viruses, experts say, because the virus creators move too quickly. That is prompting start-ups and other companies to get creative about new approaches to computer security.
"The bad guys are always trying to be a step ahead," said Matthew D Howard, a venture capitalist at Norwest Venture Partners who previously set up the security strategy at Cisco Systems. "And it doesn't take a lot to be a step ahead."

Computer viruses used to be the domain of digital mischief-makers. But in the mid-2000s, when criminals discovered that malicious software could be profitable, the number of new viruses began to grow exponentially. In 2000, there were fewer than one million new strains of malware, most of them the work of amateurs. By 2010, there were 49 million new strains, according to AV-Test, a German research institute that tests anti-virus products. The anti-virus industry has grown as well, but experts say it is falling behind. By the time its products are able to block new viruses, it is often too late. The bad guys have had their fun, siphoning out a company's trade secrets, erasing data or emptying a consumer's bank account.

A new study by Imperva, a data security firm in Redwood City, California, and students from the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology is the latest confirmation of this. Amichai Shulman, Imperva's chief technology officer, and a group of researchers collected and analysed 82 new computer viruses and put them up against more than 40 anti-virus products, made by top companies like Microsoft, Symantec, McAfee and Kaspersky Lab. They found that the initial detection rate was less than 5%.

On average, it took almost a month for anti-virus products to update their detection mechanisms and spot the new viruses. And two of the products with the best detection rates - Avast and Emsisoft - are available free; users are encouraged to pay for additional features. This despite the fact that consumers and businesses spent a combined $7.4 billion on anti-virus software last year - nearly half of the $17.7 billion spent on security software in 2011, according to Gartner.

"Existing methodologies we've been protecting ourselves with have lost their efficacy," said Ted Schlein, a security-focused investment partner at Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers. "This study is just another indicator of that. But the whole concept of detecting what is bad is a broken concept."

Part of the problem is that anti-virus products are inherently reactive. Just as medical researchers have to study a virus before they can create a vaccine, anti-virus makers must capture a computer virus, take it apart and identify its "signature" - unique signs in its code - before they can write a programme that removes it.

That process can take as little as a few hours or as long as several years. In May, researchers at Kaspersky Lab discovered Flame, a complex piece of malware that had been stealing data from computers for an estimated five years. Mikko H Hypponen, chief researcher at F-Secure, called Flame "a spectacular failure" for the anti-virus industry. "We really should have been able to do better," he wrote in an essay for Wired.com after Flame's discovery. "But we didn't. We were out of our league in our own game."
Symantec and McAfee, which built their businesses on anti-virus products, have begun to acknowledge their limitations and to try new approaches. The word "anti-virus" does not appear once on their home pages. Symantec rebranded its popular anti-virus packages: Its consumer product is now called Norton Internet Security, and its corporate offering is now Symantec Endpoint Protection.

BPO companies report decline in women workforce: Assocham

ITeS-BPO companies  have registered a significant decline in work productivity during the last fortnight as one in three female workers have either reduced working hours after sunset or quit jobs after the Delhi bus rape incident, says a quick random survey undertaken by Assocham Social Development Foundation (ASDF).

In Delhi-NCR alone, BPO-ITeS have been affected to the extent of 40 per cent. There are about 2,200 ITeS and BPO units in this region, where over 2.5 lakh women work.

What's more, the incident has impacted the productivity of the women workforce not only in Delhi-NCR region but also in major cities like Chennai, Bangalore, Mumbai, Hyderabad, Pune, Ahmedabad, Lucknow, Jaipur and Dehradun. Assocham surveyed 2,500 women and they said it was due to long hours and shift jobs.

The survey says that nearly 82 per cent of the women respondents said they have started leaving early after the sunset. The anxiety is more among those women who travel by buses, chartered buses, three-wheelers and metro is the most after sunset. About 89 per cent of those participating in the survey in Delhi, Gurgaon, Noida and Faridabad said they have begun insisting on leaving offices on time, immediately after duty hours.

Majority of the respondents of Delhi-NCR marked the atmosphere not comfortable enough for them to work in BPO and ITeS sector, with some 67 per cent calling it 'bad'.

Assocham secretary-general D S Rawat said in a release that security is one of the major concerns for women who are working in the BPO, KPO and ITeS sectors. "The odd hours of work and the long distances of travel make women quite prone to difficult and often dangerous situations," he said.

A large proportion of the respondents (62 per cent) in Delhi-NCR are satisfied with the security arrangements made within and outside workplace, though approximately 38 per cent of the respondents answered in the negative.

In the absence of proper transport facilities by the organisation, commuting becomes a difficult task involving long hours. Nearly 82 per cent of females said they fear travelling in public transport at odd hours, especially at night, in comparison to only 22 per cent of men.

"In the survey, none of the women said that they had lodged a formal complaint to any kind of authority. There is a big difference therefore, in the crime reported and the actual experiences of women. Crime statistics only reflect those crimes that are reported to the police. Therefore, violence experienced by women on public transport never enters the crime statistics, even though it is serious and rampant," added Rawat.

In 2011-12, the IT industry had 52 per cent women in its workforce compared to 32 per cent in 2008-09. At the entry level, in 2007-08, 48 per cent were women compared to 62 per cent in 2011-12. The findings reveal that the BPO workforce is relatively young, the majority being less than 30 years. The mean age of the women employees in BPOs has been found to be 21 to 28- years, adds the Assocham survey.

How technology powers supply chain

Supply chain is about managing a network of several interconnected businesses that are involved in the process of delivering the product to the end customer. Throughout this process, flow of information from one stage to another plays a crucial role as it ensures effective decision-making at the planning and execution stages.

When it comes to the flow of information, no other tool or resource can do it as quickly and accurately as technology. This is true when it comes to supply chain as well.

Today, technology in supply chain is much more than just computers. It includes varied aspects, right from factory automation, enhanced communication devices, data recognition equipments to other types of automated hardware and services.

Companies have also started using technologies like advanced versions of speech recognition, digital imaging , radio frequency identification (RFID), real-time location systems (RTLS), bar coding, GPScommunication , Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP), Electronic Data Interchange (EDI), etc to improve their processes.

These IT-enabled infrastructure capabilities not only help organisations achieve higher efficiency, but also reduce cycle time, ensure delivery of goods and services in timely manner and improve overall supply chain agility.

Use of technology in three arenas
Organisations use technology in three broad areas namely transaction processing, supply chain planning and collaboration, and order tracking and delivery coordination. In transaction processing, companies employ technology to increase efficiency of information exchanged regularly between various supply chain partners. Typically, in this area, technology enables easy order processing, sending dispatch advice, tracking delivery status , billing, generating order quotes, etc.

Technology also helps in supply chain planning and collaboration, thereby improving the overall effectiveness of the process. Here, technology is used to share planning-related information like customer feedback, demand forecasting, inventory level, production capacity and other data. This helps in managing waste and inconsistency arising out of unpredictable and logistically demanding markets. According to Mr Prashant Potnis, GM - IT and Systems at Spykar Lifestyle Pvt Ltd, "Statistical capabilities enabled by technology like importing historical sales data, creating statistical forecasts, importing customer forecasts, collaborating with customers, managing and building forecasts, etc. bring accuracy to a company's demand plans."

Lastly, technology is also useful for order tracking and delivery coordination, as it monitors and coordinates individual shipments, ensuring delivery of the product to the consumer without errors.

Employing technology at all these levels no doubt comes at a cost. However, apart from reducing physical work, technology improves the quality of information, expedites information transfer, and increases and smoothly manages the volume of transactions. Yogesh Shroff, Finance & Supply Chain Director at Nivea India Pvt Ltd, agrees. "A combination of process changes and use of advanced technology can help companies gain better returns on marketing and sales investments, reduce cost, strengthen relationships across the value chain and retain customers," he says.

While most companies have employed technology to manage their supply chain today, they have realised that conventional methods have to be pushed beyond their peripheries to sustain in highly competitive environments and fields. If applied correctly, technology holds the potential to turn supply chain into a major differentiating factor for any company.

Acer to launch 7-inch Android 4.1 tablet at Rs 7,999 in India: Report

The competition in the budget tablet market seems to be getting hotter. Acer is reportedly all set to launch its upcoming Iconia Tab B1 for Rs 7,999 in India. The tablet is speculated to be rolled out in early 2013.

Previously, Wall Street Journal quoted a source as saying that Acer was working on a $99 tablet that will have a 7-inch screen with 1024x600presolution and run on Android 4.1 (Jelly Bean). A US Federal Communications Commission(FCC) application for the tablet revealed others specifications of the Google Nexus 7 rival, including 1.2GHz dual-core processor, 512MB RAM, 8GB onboard storage, Bluetooth 4.0, Wi-Fi as well as microSD support.

Though it made an appearance at US FCC, the tablet according to WSJ, is aimed primarily at emerging markets. Images of Acer Iconia Tab B1 surfaced on a Serbian forum and were confirmed to be real by WSJ's source.

Earlier in November, Asus-manufactured Google Nexus 7 was launched at Rs 19,999 in India, much higher than expected, considering that the device sells for $199 in US. According to a CyberMedia research, Micromax was the leader in the Indian tablet market in second quarter of 2012. In October last year, Manufacturers Association of IT predicts that the country's tablet market is set to grow by 40% till 2015-16, to 7.3 million units from 0.95 million units in 2012.

If Acer captures the attention of the Indian tablet buyers with its Iconia Tab B1, it is expected to give tough competition to Micromax's Funbook series, the leader in the tablet segment in India. It is widely expected that the Taiwanese manufacturer will showcase the device at Consumer Electronics Show, scheduled for Jan 8 to 11, 2013, in the US.