Spreading their reach Date:   Monday , December 31, 2007 UST Global opens campuses in Kerala Gods’ own country, Kerala, is fast becoming an IT hub apart from being a favourite tourist destination. UST Global, a provider of IT services and BPO solutions, is scaling upwards its operations here by opening two campuses. Spread over an area of 36 acres, the Thiruvananthapuram campus represents one of the most ambitious IT projects in Kerala, with Phase 1 creating 5000 jobs by early 2009. The Kochi facility, which is the second center, features a total built up area of 200,000 square feet on eight floors. The center that has started with a strength of 250 will scale up to accommodate 2000 IT professionals within two years. IBM’s SOA Leadership Center in Bangalore: 1st in Asia Pacific The 73,000 strong IBM India has witnessed a 40 percent growth in headcount from last year. Now in India the big get bigger and IBM is riding the wave to open a Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) Leadership Center in Bangalore. The center is the first of its kind in Asia Pacific and the fourth in a series of SOA Leadership Centers planned across the world. It will be fully functional during the first quarter of 2008 and the center will work closely with universities to address skill shortages evident in fresh graduates. The heavy scaling especially in the telecom and banking space, are driving companies to be nimble which in turn is facilitating the adoption of SOA. Marlabs expands India operations With the inauguration of a new 600-seater facility in Bangalore, Marlabs, a provider of technology services and solutions is expanding its operations in India. The move is to integrate their three facilities in Bangalore under one roof. The new facility will enable product development, application development, and support in India, which implies that significant domain knowledge, and IP would be built in India as well. The company has been operational since 2000 employing over 400 professionals and plans to raise its headcount to over 2000 in the next two years. Legal blues for IT firms A three-member team from the legal department of Microsoft Corp inspected a few computer software companies in Thiruvananthapuram and found widespread use of pirated software. The superintendent of police there, Arun Kumar Sinha, confirmed that the legal wing of Microsoft had registered a complaint with them and sought assistance for conducting raids. “We have found widespread use of their pirated software. The police has registered a case under the Copyright Act against the IT firms that have violated the rule of law,” says Sinha. Now Fabs have fabulous potential in India Make hay while the sun shines! Three companies including Moser Baer, Videocon and Titan Energy have applied for incentives under the semiconductor policy, announced by the government three months ago. The companies made a proposal to the government with a combined investment value of about five billion dollars. The IT Ministry has also received enquiries from 14 companies that include Suzlon, Reliance, Solar Semiconductor and Tata. Official sources said that while Moser Baer plans to manufacture solar photovoltaic cells or modules, Titan Energy Systems would start with solar cells and modules and get into wafer and poly-silicon, at a later stage. The proposal by Videocon pertains to a proposed LCD unit. Microsoft India beats CSIR in R&D The monopoly of the government-controlled Council of Scientific & Industrial Research (CSIR) in innovation and research seems to be under threat. Rising R&D activities in the private sector has led to Microsoft India toppling CSIR from the top slot in receiving patents for research done in India during 2006. Microsoft has bagged 584 patents in India during the last year against CSIR’s 476, according to a report ‘Innovation in India: White Paper Infovision 2007’ by the U.S. headquartered Thomson Scientific. A ranking of the top 10 patent assignees for all Indian inventions from 1968 to 2004 shows CSIR dominating the research activities followed by FMCG major Hindustan Lever (now renamed as HUL) and Hoechst India (now absorbed into Sanofi-Aventis).