HP back with a bang ?

The second quarter revenue for HP, was very high, a whooping 51 % rise in profits http://biz.yahoo.com/ap/060516/earns_hp.html?.v=15 This is the same HP, which was dying a couple of years back. The results have exceeded analysts expectations. Mark Hurd surely seems to be delivering. More importantly, HP might overtake IBM as the biggest IT company. Its 2Q revenues of $22.6 billion have overtaken IBM's 1Q revenues of $20.7 billion. Have a look at HP and IBM's propaganda, and its very clear that the battle between these two giants has become fierce now.

http://h71028.www7.hp.com/ERC/cache/107553-0-0-0-121.html?ERL=true the above speaks about HP-UX 11i, and it is titled "The Real Story about HP-UX 11i", and makes some statements like HP holds the # 1 position in units and revenue for high-end enterprise UNIX on a worldwide basis. Seems interesting. Also keep in mind that IBM is investing heavily in AIX, and AIX is improving, with support for NFSv4 in AIX much before other *nix vendors. Personally, I was very much surprised that HP-UX 11i is still around :-)

However it remains to be seen, if HP can sustain this sort of growth.

Pune's heading towards doom ?

Although, I have been staying in Pune, for more then 3 years now, I still long to go back to Mumbai, my hometown. When I first came to Pune, the first thing I observed was that, it had very less traffic as compared to Mumbai, and that made me very happy.

Pune's pro's are
*. The weather is pleasant in the mornings.
*. Less crowded then Mumbai.
*. Lower real-estate prices, as compared to Mumbai.

However Pune is loosing out on its advantages. Its population is increasing, and along with that, de-forestation is increasing at an alarming rate, which has caused the average temperature to rise considerably. Its infra-structure is poor, compared to Mumbai, and it is worse then Mumbai's far-flung suburbs. Water scarcity is going to hit Pune hard in the near future, already the municipal corporation is having trouble supplying water to the growing suburbs. Upcoming area's like Kondhwa, Wiman Nagar, etc are already facing water scarcity problems, and with no good plans to augment Pune's water supply, the situation is ought to worsen.

Pune's municipal corporation needs to seriously consider these issues. The state govt also needs to look into the health of the city, since Pune is home to many IT companies.

The above holds true in some respects for most of the booming mid-size cities
of India. By mid-size I mean, those, who have a population of a few million, and
witnessed rapid growth in recent times.

Not all people endorse my view though, have a look at the below
http://skyscrapercity.com/archive/index.php/t-158205.html
It shows the positive side of pune. With more focus on the upcoming
buldings , malls and IT campuses.

OutSourcing

With all the hoopla around outsourcing and the current state of Indian IT,
the below link contains a lot of info, on both
http://www.openoutsource.com/resources-index-req-MostPopular-ratenum-5-ratetype-percent.phtml

It is a collection of news items related to Indian IT and BPO.

Technology as an enabler.

If given a choice to most software engineers, most of them would choose to work on OS Internals and related area's. Most of the software engineers are often fascinated by kernel development stuff. However, for the end-user, what matters most is how can technology help him to become more productive, and how much value it can add.

It so happened, that I had visited my cousin, and he wanted me to create a web-site for him. Now, I am not that interested in web related stuff, since to me, the coding is not challenging. However, for my cousin, he doesn't cares about kernel programming and stuff, and what he wanted was a web site, for his business. So there I am, playing around with html and stuff. Just to add, I had done a module on E-Commerce, while in APGDST, and that experience helped me, in building a website for my cousin.

That's the reason, why guys working in Enterprise computing are paid more :-)