Virtusa honoured in the 2013 FinTech 100 List

Virtusa Corporation, a global business consulting and IT outsourcing company announced that it has been recognised by American Banker, Bank Technology News and IDC Financial Insights on the 2013 FinTech 100 List. The list, currently in its 10th year, ranks the most successful financial services technology vendors around the world based on their calendar year 2012 revenue from financial services.  This is the fourth consecutive year that Virtusa has made the list. This year, Virtusa ranked #58 on the list of financial technology companies that were judged according to their global revenues. The company has moved up 30 spots in the past three years.

Director/VP level professionals in IT/Telecom are satisfied with the sector’s career growth path

Everyone is concerned about their career growth path, and strive hard towards it. Employees today, have a clear vision about their growth path and the destination. They begin this journey right from day one of their career. In IT/Telecom sector, Director/VP level professionals are the ones who are extremely happy with career growth path offered in this sector. 32% of the entire Director/VP level candidate base, in IT/Telecom sector, rated career growth path to be the best feature of this sector.

According to Anuj Mathur, CEO, Q3 Technologies, the sector is fast evolving and the need the senior and executive talent is growing with it. Moreover, the sheer scale of capabilities and client engagements in a global scenario differentiates their growth path from other sectors. “They are instrumental in providing world class and cutting edge services or putting in place proven solutions which bring in high performance levels and thereby leading to immediate career growth paths,” he stated.

Social-media policies are slowly changing from risk management to breaking new opportunities

Social media present challenges for businesses, but also phenomenal new opportunities. So far, however, businesses have tended to focus on the potential downsides of social media, and their related policies often have concentrated on risk mitigation.

This appears to be changing, however, according to the findings of a study by Emmanuelle Vaast of McGill University in Montreal and Evgeny Kaganer of the Instituto de Estudios Superiores de la Empresa at the University of Navarra in Spain, a study published recently in The Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication. As social media have become more ubiquitous, companies have started to perceive their benefits, and this has been reflected in subtle changes in their policies.

The authors studied how companies perceive and respond to their employees' use of social media. They examined 74 corporate-policy documents concerning the use of public social-media sites, analyzing the documents using the theory of "affordances" - the idea that, when people perceive an object, they see it in terms of its "opportunities for action" - put simply, what it can be used for.

How, then, do companies think that social media can be used?

Prior research has identified four main "affordances" of social media: 1) Visibility, meaning that behavior, knowledge, preferences and connections that once were invisible become visible, 2) persistence, meaning that, once created, content exists for an indefinite period of time, 3) editability, meaning that people can collaboratively amend, add to, revise and change content published on the Internet, and 4) association, referring to social ties, either between people or between people and the content they create.

While manifestations of all four affordances were present in the social-media policies analyzed, companies tended to concentrate on certain affordances more than others.

Visibility and persistence dominated the policies. The idea that people who were not your intended audience might read what you post, and that content you create will continue to exist for an open-ended period of time, were of particular concern. The policies tended to regard these as potential risks, focusing on the possibility of reputational damage.

Editability was muted. Where social media's editability was acknowledged, it was seen primarily as "editability by others." There was an interesting relationship between visibility and persistence, on the one hand, and editability, on the other,

in that the former seemed to overshadow and, to some extent, displace the latter. This was exemplified by the fact that "What not to post" was a far more common theme than "What to post."

Association also was interpreted through the lens of risk. The focus was on associations between employees and the company, with employees often being warned to use disclaimers clarifying that their views were personal, and not those of the company. The policies tended to ignore the potential for employees to use social media to collaborate or interact.

In general there were three overarching themes in companies' attempts to shape employees' use of social media.

First, many borrowed from existing policies that had been developed in other contexts, such as general communications and human-resources guidelines. These borrowings sometimes were complex and lacked relevance, which undermined their effectiveness.

Second, some attempted to produce new policies tailored for social media that acknowledged special features such as the blurring of work and off-hours roles, as well as providing advice on "what to post" and "what not to post." These, however, often remained underdeveloped and lacked specifics.

 

A third theme was the attempt to hedge against or reduce social-media risks that the company was unable to anticipate. Often this meant telling employees to check with someone in authority if they were unsure about their social-media behavior. However, the issue of whether or how those in authority were qualified for the task rarely was addressed.

What all this implied was that the social-media environment was a new and changing one, and could not adequately be governed by existing policies created for other purposes. To cope with this, companies attempted to develop new governance mechanisms and establish some means to deal with problems on a case-by-case basis.

Social-media policies are changing, however, as evidenced by the fact that more recent examples referred to dedicated social-media departments or teams, which suggests a professionalization of companies' relationship with social media. Also, while risk mitigation still was a prevalent theme in recent policies, they also tended to recognize the positive aspects of social media, such as their ability to foster transparency and build positive relationships with customers or partners. Worries about the blurring of the personal/professional boundary seemed to have slightly decreased, while the theme of "fostering community" had increased.

In short, it seems that companies are cautiously starting to see the positives of social media.

'Having the right mindset to apply technology in a team's context is what the company actually needs

Rajnish Kumar, CTO / Co-Founder, ixigo.com

What are the essentials when it comes to tech talent strategy?

An effective tech talent strategy understands the company’s current skills and capabilities, and can also successfully asses the company’s future need. It must recognise the unique value a company proposes to deliver and the effect it wants to have. Why are people leaving? Which categories of people are leaving the most? What can be done to retain them? What do employees feel about working there? These are some of things that need to be considered. This has to be followed by future needs analysis – where should investment flow; to business innovation or efficiency in IT delivery.

Brief about the specific IT/Tech skills required for mid-senior level roles

There is a common misconception that proficiency in a particular programming language is the key skill to look for. In reality, the more important skills to look for are critical thinking and problem-solving capabilities. Languages can be learnt, but having the right mindset to apply technology in a team’s context is what the company actually needs. Having said that, there are some skills which are hard to develop, and are imperative for the success of any organisation aspiring to build products for the web and mobile. iOS is one of them, as it requires some unique skillsets which are not shared across other development platforms – something which can’t be ignored, given the market share of iOS devices. 

World's first phone with 2K resolution launched

Chinese manufacturer  Vivo has pipped the likes of Samsung and LG to launch the world's first smartphone with 2K (2560x1440p) resolution, named Xplay 3S. This phone's screen has more pixels than the current crop of 1080p displays, making text, videos, images etc clearer and sharper.

The new Vivo Xplay 3S's 6-inch display has pixel density of 490ppi, which is higher than the 469ppi (the highest pixel density before this launch) of HTC One. Other features of Xplay 3S are also top end, such as 2.3GHz quad-core Snapdragon 800 chipset, 3GB RAM and 13MP rear camera. It also has a 5MP camera in front and comes with an app called Photo+ that features augmented reality functionalities and shares video on the cloud.

The phone is powered by a customized version of Android, named Funtouch OS. Other features of Vivo Xplay 3S include 32GB built-in storage, 3,200mAh battery and metallic bezel. The phone weighs 172gram, measures 4.95mm at its thinnest point and comes with a fingerprint scanner.

The manufacturer has included several audio technologies in the phone, such as TI OPA2604 amplifier and ESS Technology ES9018 DAC. Its DTS Headphones:X technology supports 7.1 and 11.1 surround sound effect.

Vivo is also the company behind the world's thinnest smartphone, X3, which is just 5.75mm thick.

Samsung's upcoming Galaxy S5 smartphone is also rumoured to feature 2K resolution. Earlier this year, LG unveiled its 2K resolution display panel that is likely to be used in future smartphones. Chinese manufacturer Oppo has also announced that its upcoming Find 7 handset will have 2K screen resolution.