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JANUARY 2005 |
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Publisher's Note
Amar Bose is best known as a sound whiz. But Project Sound is not about new-fangled acoustics. It is a research project that took all of 24 years which would never have survived in any publicly-held company driven by quarterly profits and run by bean-counting accountants. It also promises to revolutionize the conventional auto ride, because the product of Project Sound, the Bose suspension system, replaces automotive shock absorbers with ultra fast linear electromagnetic motors. The system isolates the passenger compartment from bumps and dips and eliminates pitching and rolling during braking and turning. The motors move so quickly and forcefully that they can extend downward to roll the tire through a deep rut and then retract fast enough so that the car’s occupants perceive nothing more than a mild stirring. Our cover story has details.
MAIN FEATURE Bose Breakthrough: Electromagnetic Auto Suspension A Siliconeer Report The name of Amar Bose has become synonymous with hi-fidelity sound. But Project Sound is something completely different. The 24-year-long secret project has developed a revolutionary auto suspension system that offers a magic carpet ride, thanks to some dense mathematical research and use of electromagnetics. Siliconeer presents a report on Bose’s latest breakthrough that has experts spellbound and reflects on its progenitor Amar Bose, the amazing septuagenarian wunderkind.  Entrepreneur and engineering whiz Amar Bose can at last look back with a pleasing sense of vindication at 24 years of research on a revolutionary auto suspension system which seemed like a pipedream when he began. Here’s what Automobile magazine has to say about his latest scientific breakthrough: “We have just returned from The Mountain (aka Bose Corporation headquarters in Framingham, Massachusetts) where we witnessed the first mega-breakthrough in car suspensions since the gas-pressurized shock. Is that hyperbolic enough for you?”Supplanting almost 100 years of traditional spring-and-shock-absorber suspension systems, this new system from Bose uses electromagnetic motors in place of traditional shocks. The system also improves handling, virtually eliminating body roll in tight turns and minimizing pitching motion during braking and acceleration. “This is the first time a suspension system is the same for a sports car and for a luxury car,” says Amar Bose. The premise was simple, as Automobile magazine put it: “Develop a suspension system that would offer the magic carpet ride of a fine luxury automobile, yet provide the crisp handling of a high-performance sports car.” Easier said than done. Luxury automakers like Lotus, Infiniti and Mercedes-Benz have tried and failed.
In 1980 he decided to work on it. As is his wont, he ignored the 100-year-old beaten track of automakers who had perfected fluid-based suspension hardware. He threw away the hardware model, and along with it the limitations. A shock absorber can only absorb energy. Fluid inertia makes hydraulic systems too sluggish. Bose focused on figuring out mathematically what kind of performance was theoretically possible. Five years of mathematical analysis revealed a tremendous performance gap. There was no way any adjustments to existing shock-absorber technology could close it. So Bose engineers focused on an electromagnetic solution. All they needed was four things: (a) high-efficiency, high-power linear motors and (b) amplifiers, (c) extremely complex control algorithms to stabilize the motors and (d) superfast microcomputers to run the system. So what if none of this stuff existed? Bose decided to tackle the first three and hope the industry came up with the fourth. Bose’s suspension team took on the challenge of designing high-speed linear motors, control algorithms and high-efficiency amplifiers. They expected the computer industry to get to the point after a while on their fourth essential item, high-speed processing. They began testing designs and software. By 1989, the team developed a prototype ready to be tested on the road. In place of traditional shock absorbers, the prototype had linear electromagnetic motors installed at each wheel. Based on technology Bose pioneered at MIT, power amplifiers deliver electricity to the motors in response to signals from the control algorithms. The nimble motors are so quick and forceful, they can extend downward to roll the tire through a deep rut and then retract so fast that the all a motorist senses is a mild stirring. On the far side of the pothole, the motor operates as a generator, so the suspension requires less than a third the power of a typical car air- conditioning system. So what is this wonderful suspension system actually like? Proud Bose engineers have been taking people on test runs, and those who have experienced it are dazzled.
“Next, in Bose mode, we attacked the same horrid road, but inside the passenger compartment, we were sailing along on a cruise ship. The teensiest of cradle rock. “Looking at a mirror on an adjacent wall of the garage, we could see our LS400’s tires chattering and bashing along, as if they belonged to another car, not the one in which we were blissfully rocking along. It was mind-boggling, unbelievably astonishing, no less than earth shattering.” There you have it. An amazing technological breakthrough that is remarkable not just for its intrinsic value, but also because of the way it was done: 24 years of faith in innovation and research. In today’s age of tight-fisted bean counting executives with one eye constantly on stock prices, how the on earth is it possible? For the answer you have to look at one man—a trailblazing septuagenarian who at a very frisky 75 still manages to have the insatiable curiosity of a toddler. Throughout his life, Amar Gopal Bose has had the avid curiosity of a child, the tenacity to follow it through, and the gumption to flout conventional thinking.
By the time he was 13, he could fix radios, and when his father’s business went belly-up during World War II, young Amar helped support the family by fixing radios after school. At his alma mater MIT, when he was hired to teach network theory, he threw away the syllabus and confronted his students with nine blackboards. He urged students to ask tough questions, expected section leaders to think out loud to illustrate the problem-solving process, abolished exam time limits and allowed open books. His classes developed a cult following. One was described as Life 101. Many classes drew mathematicians, physicists, biologists. William H. Brody, now the president of Johns Hopkins University, says of him: “He would walk into a lecture to 350 students, and you could hear a pin drop. He commanded a lot of respect, because of the force of his intellect and his total dedication to the students. His class gave me the courage to tackle high-risk problems; it equipped me with the problem-solving skills I needed to be successful in several careers. Amar Bose taught me how to think.”
“I would have been fired a hundred times at a company run by MBAs,” he told Popular Science magazine. “But I never went into business to make money. I went into business so that I could do interesting things that hadn’t been done before.” So number crunchers’ myopic obsession with the bottom line was out, a commitment to pure research was in. There have been instances where Bose has allowed a project to continue even when he thought it may not succeed. In 1983 engineering graduate student Ken Jacob enrolled in Bose’s acoustics class during his final semester at MIT. Jacob planned to design sound for Broadway productions. “Within 20 minutes of the start of that first lecture,” Jacob said, “all my plans had changed. Professor Bose connected everything I had learned and put all the pieces together. I said, I’ve got to work for this guy.’” Jacob was true to his word. He became director and chief engineer of Bose’s Live Music Technology Group. In 1994 he unveiled the Bose Auditioner program, a software tool that allows acoustic engineers to hear precisely what a proposed audio system will sound like from any seat in a large venue even before building construction begins.
Bose says it’s the principle of allowing bright minds to search for answers that was more important to him. “I thought the computational power wouldn’t be there,” he says. “But the problem was tough enough and the team was talented enough that I thought their research would yield something good.” The funny thing was that Bose was proved wrong: The program works today.
The program has been used to design public address systems at the Staples Center in Los Angeles, the Sistine Chapel, and even Masjid al-Haram, the grand mosque at Mecca, a challenging environment, full of reverberating marble, with a history of failed audio solutions. Popular Science, in a long, admiring essay, sums it up best about the merit of Amar Bose’s mindset and contribution. “The value of Amar Bose—and by extension, his company—isn’t so much in the things he has invented, but in the sense of possibility he inspires,” the magazine wrote. “Bose reminds us that we could all afford to be much more skyward-looking, far-fetched and curious, and that we could all believe more strongly in our own potential to create.”
INFOTECH INDIA  Among Asia’s Best ... Grid Computing ... Secondary ADS ... Tata Indicom in Tirunelveli ... FDA Approval ... Veritas Hires 400 Engineers ... More BPL Cell Sites ... Tata Steel, IIT Tie-up ... IT-enabled Agriculture ... Global Center for Research ... Israeli Arms Maker Plans Plant ... Inputs to Cryptology Sought ... Outsourcing Aids U.S. — Here is the latest on information technology from India Among Asia’s Best The Indian Institute of Science, Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur and the University of Kolkata have figured among top 100 Asia Pacific universities in a study. While the Indian Institute of Science ranked 22nd, both Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur and the University of Kolkata were ranked 67th, according to rankings released by China’s Institute of Higher Education, Shanghai Jiao Tong University. The top two positions were held by Japan, followed by Australia. In the group ranked 67th are 89 institutions from various countries of Asia Pacific. However, not a single Indian university or institute of higher education ranks in the world’s 100 best universities, the Chinese university said. Over 50 percent of the best are American. The top ranked is Harvard University, followed by Stanford University. The two American universities are followed by the University of Cambridge, U.K., ranked 3 in the list. Countries where universities are mentioned apart from the U.S. and U.K. in the list are institutions of Japan, Canada, Switzerland, the Netherlands, France, Germany, Sweden, Australia, Denmark, Russia, Norway, Finland and Austria. G.B. Prabhat, director, consulting and enterprise solutions, Satyam Computer, said, “We have established a grid computing facility in Chennai and are in the process of collaborating with leading product vendors to reach our business. We are also discussing partnerships with other leaders in the world.” “Satyam had made substantial investments in setting up grid computing facilities and developing prototypes,” he said, adding that the Chennai facility will have a strength of 100 persons in the next couple of years. Grid computing is the new age technology that helps an organization maximize the utilization of its computational resources without additional investments. The key application sectors that can use this practice include life sciences, government, financial services, geo sciences and manufacturing. Satyam has developed half a dozen prototypes for these application areas. “We will soon have customized grid computing tools for various application areas,” Prabhat added. The Infosys board received the nod at an extraordinary general meeting in Bangalore. Infosys chairman and mentor N.R. Narayana Murthy spoke to share-holders over videoconference from Bangkok. He said the value of shares on offer for ADS is over $ 1 billion at the end of trading Dec. 16, even as some minority shareholders expressed reservation for the sponsored issue. Bangalore-based Infosys was the first Indian firm to list its ADS on the NASDAQ stock exchange in 1999. Infosys managing director and CEO Nandan M. Nilekani told reporters that the company would soon hold road shows in various countries to attract foreign institutional investors to buy the shares. In Japan, the stock would be allotted to retail investors. Indian shareholders will have an offer to sell their stock at a premium over the price at which it is being traded on the Indian stock market. Infosys shares closed at Rs. 2,105 Dec. 17 end on the Bombay Stock Exchange, while it was traded at $68 on the NASDAQ Dec. 16. The promoters hold 22 percent of Infosys equity, FIIs 40.58 percent, and the Indian public 20.77 percent, and the remainder is held by mutual funds and private bodies. Tata Teleservices, which has invested Rs. 840 crore in Tamil Nadu for setting up its telecom infrastructure, will invest another Rs. 260 crore in the state before this fiscal ends, said Madhusudan, its chief operating officer in Tamil Nadu. Tata Indicom’s offerings in Tirunelveli will include CDMA mobiles (both post-paid and pre-paid), fixed wireless telephones and public telephone booths, he said in a press release here. “This launch marks a significant step in providing quick and cost-effective fixed and mobile services to customers of Tirunelveli,” he said. With the launch, Tata Indicom’s coverage has extended to 90 cities in Tamil Nadu. “Tata Indicom is planning to extend its present footprint in the state from 90 to 145 cities in Tamil Nadu by March 2005,” Madhusudan said. The expansion plan was in line with the company’s strategy to further penetrate the markets in its existing circles on one hand and to establish a nationwide footprint on the other, through the rollout in 12 new circles, he said. Of the Rs. 1,100 crore that Tata Teleservices had planned to invest in the state, the company has already invested Rs. 840 crore and the balance would be invested during the course of this financial year, he added. Fluoxetine is indicated for the treatment of major depressive disorder and obsessions and compulsions, it said. The product is also indicated for treatment of binge-eating and vomiting behaviors in patients with moderate to severe bulimia nervosa, it said. Total annual market sales for fluoxetine capsules and tablets were $534 million, with 40 mg capsules totaling $176 million, it added. “We hired 400 people at our engineering centre at Pune this year. Last year the number of engineering staff the company had in India was 600,” said Agendra Kumar, country manager for India at Veritas. The company has also acquired a 10 acre plot in the western Indian city of Pune to build an integrated facility, he said. Veritas’ engineering facility in India accounted for 28 percent of all patents filed by the company last year, though the team here is just one-fourth of the total worldwide. The company’s revenues from India have grown more than 60 percent year-on-year since it started selling in India five years back. Apart from engineering staff working on new technologies, Veritas also has a technical support center in Pune. The new sites, to be set up with an investment of Rs. 75 crore, would enhance the coverage and capacity on highways and in peripheral areas where large communities live. By March 2005, Tamil Nadu would have about 300 cell sites, K.A. Muhammad Salim, COO of the company in the south, told reporters in Coimbatore. Despite increasing competition, the company has registered a 100 percent growth in subscriber base, from 1.90 lakh in November 2003 to 3.82 lakh till November 2004. The capacity expansion would help double the subscriber base within six months, he said. R. Suresh Kumar, COO of Tamil Nadu circle, said the overwhelming response to the “one second billing and 99 plan” on post-paid connections had clearly indicated customer confidence in the company. Elaborating on the course, Muthuraman stated that the course will start from the year 2005-06 with a student strength of 20 to 25 and in due course, the strength will be increased. The course will provide ample training both in the academic arena and in the industrial front. Muthuraman inaugurated the international symposium of research students on materials science and engineering at IIT-Madras. Dr Baldev Raj, director, IGCAR, urged the student community to study metallurgy, as metallurgy plays an important role in the day-to-day life. A total of 203 papers were presented during the symposium, with 169 national participants and 34 international participants. About 28 overseas institutes of the U.S., U.K., Germany, Australia, Japan, China, Korea, Malaysia, Turkey and Sri Lanka besides 43 Indian institutions participated in the first of its kind experimentation in the world. The total project cost is estimated at about Rs. 71 crore to be implemented in two phases during 2005-06 and 2006-07, Tamil Nadu IT Minister D. Jayakumar said at a meeting attended by Agriculture Minister K. Pandurangan and other top officials of the state IT and Agriculture departments. The first phase of the project TN-Agrisnet, which is estimated to cost Rs. 26 crore, will see the establishment of an IT network infrastructure at the state agriculture commissionerate and the 28 offices of joint director of agriculture, he said. In the Rs. 46 crore second phase, the TN-Agrisnet nodes will be established in all the 384 offices of agriculture development officer in the block levels, said Jagmohan Singh Raju, Commissioner of Agriculture, Tamil Nadu. “If the means are provided, we shall usher in a knowledge-based agriculture in the state in three years from now,” he said. The project, which was aimed at the two crore agriculture laborers and 87 lakh agriculture families in Tamil Nadu, would also assist the farming community to use ICT to know about water-management, weather forecast, price information and crop production, said Vivek Harinarain, IT secretary, Tamil Nadu. Low-cost location and fast research had enabled India to become a global hub for research, he said while delivering a public lecture on discovery, development and delivery, organized by the M.V. Hospital for Diabetes as part of its golden jubilee celebrations. Over 100 major companies had set up their research and development centers in India during the past five years, bringing in more foreign investments besides providing job opportunities, he said. Citing a reversal of the brain drain trend, he said over 750 Indians, who had migrated to other parts of the world, had returned to the country to head research and development units. “Our Indian partner will be the majority shareholder in the company with our subsidiary, International Technologies Lasers holding 26 percent of the shares. We will sell our produce in India and also export to other countries globally,” Soltam Systems chairman Avraham Gilat told PTI. “Our share is the maximum a foreign company can hold under Indian rules,” Gilat emphasized. The new plant to manufacture night vision systems, digital compasses and military binoculars is aimed at utilizing the low manufacturing cost environment in India that will give the company a better competitive edge. “India has been recognized by us as a key partner and we intend to enhance cooperation,” he said. The Soltam Group is said to have sold more than $100 million worth of artillery systems to the Indian Army, which is an important customer of its products. The company is also competing for a tender worth $1 billion with companies from Sweden and South Africa for the supply of 1,500 155 mm howitzer guns to India. The plant to be set up in Bangalore will get a license to manufacture components and parts that the company anyway purchases from foreign firms, Gilat said, adding that calculations made by ITL show that a plant in India will significantly reduce costs. Inaugurating a three-day international conference on cryptology here, he said because of the minimal inputs from Indian scientists, cryptology research had not developed to the level as desired. “Apart from its scientific aspects, cryptology has assumed social, political, commercial and strategic connotations,” he said. Widespread use of the Internet had made flow of information easy but at the same time also made it vulnerable to attack, he said. Secured access to the Internet and securing information flow over the Internet would be vital for operations depending on such access and information, he said. The state-of-the art cryptology was the only know-how that the technology community of the world possessed to secure the information flow over open networks like the Internet. President A.P.J. Abdul Kalam, who addressed the seminar through video conferencing, called upon participants to come up with authenticated and assured mechanisms of evolving encryption with provable security. India should find a pride of place in the information security world, he added. The study by AMR Research said the cost savings from offshore outsourcing will create an additional $30 billion per year in new investments for U.S. companies. By then, the Indian IT labor force will be larger than three million, and half of the workers will be performing jobs for U.S. Companies. Outsourcing to India will aid the U.S. economy if the savings from outsourcing continue to be reinvested in new strategic projects. The impact of these new projects can be huge. According to the research into Demand-Driven Supply Networks, investments that allow companies to improve just 10 percent of their ability to fulfill orders that are complete, accurate, on time, and in perfect condition can result in additional earnings of 50 cents per share, a result that stockholders will applaud. Companies effectively outsourcing to India can slash by 40 percent to 50 percent the cost of application management and development, data center operations, help desk support, and other non-strategic activities. With the cost of average U.S. IT “fully loaded” labor approaching $80,000 per worker per year, a worker in India represents a $36,000 savings per year, and 1.5 million workers represent $54 billion in savings each year. The AMR research shows that companies reinvest 60 percent of savings from outsourcing in IT or business unit projects — that’s $30 billion per year. Companies, on average, invest $2.5 million per year for a strategic project. Depending on the specific project category, average investments per year break down as follows: Supplier facing projects worth $1.8 million, product lifecycle management projects worth $2.3 million, Customer-facing projects (the most expensive) worth $3.4 million. With the savings from outsourcing to India, companies can fund and launch 12,000 new strategic projects.
INTERNET
 Hi Tech Porn: Sex, Cell Phone and Baazi - By Siddharth Srivastava The recent brouhaha over a sex video circulating on the Internet shows that when puritan values, an adolescent obsession with sex and high tech meet, it’s a highly combustible mix, writes Siddharth Srivastava. It’s scandalized everybody in India: two twelfth-grade students of a posh private school in Delhi indulged in an intimate sexual act in the chemistry lab. In this age of adolescent sex and uninterrupted Internet access, this isn’t really a surprise even in a conservative society like India, except for one detail. The boy happened to possess a camera cell phone and without the knowledge of the girl, he recorded the proceedings, passed it on to a few friends to show off his exploits, who in turn forwarded it to a few more, forming an endless chain, with the 90-second clip now being sold on the Internet and the hottest selling CD at Delhi’s Palika Bazaar where all such stuff is sold. The CEO of Baazi.com, India’s reply to Ebay, (in fact Ebay now owns it) was whisked off to jail to calm a public outcry. This is hardly the first time teenagers have indulged in sex, but the fact that everybody can see it happening has created a furor. The knee-jerk reaction is to look for a scapegoat. The boy and girl in question have been suspended from school, so have the boy’s friends who received the video clip. Others have blamed the school administration for allowing students to carry cell phones and that, too, fitted with a camera. Parents who indulge their wards by buying them cell phones are also being considered culprits. The government, which has been lax in coaxing schools to keep students in check, has been blamed, too. Most importantly, it is the use and abuse of technology that progresses at a rapid pace, opening young minds to detrimental effects, that has come under critical scrutiny. Many observers have talked about the decadence of Indian culture and values and the mindless aping of the West, which does not set the best example to youngsters around the world. Then there is the all encompassing satellite television and the film industry where the finger can be pointed. Everybody is lashing out at somebody else. In the seamier world at Palika Bazaar, Delhi’s municipal market, business is brisk, as there are more and more porn clips in circulation. There are reports of employees having caught their colleagues in the act, a manager and his secretary purportedly from GE, bathroom and bedroom scenes, honeymooning couples….the school episode has opened a virtual Pandora’s box of sexually explicit clips doing the rounds, recorded on the sly by youngsters and amateur cameramen out to make a fast buck. A prominent newspaper asks: “Is it all just pandering to our basic instincts, and our fascination for pornography? Have we become a nation of voyeurs? And every time a sexual escapade comes out in the open why should it — or our interest in it — be so scandalously shocking? Are we a nation of repressed sexuality? After all, sex always sells and it is one of our most basic urges.” The fact of the matter is that sex and sexual peccadilloes exist in every society and it seems to get younger with each generation, but can obscenity be stopped, eliminated, checked? It is not just about sex. In a survey of television viewers in the U.S., 81 percent of adults thought reality TV shows pander to our worst instincts: deriving pleasure in watching others frightened or humiliated. Yet, reality TV is the most widely viewed in the U.S. — and catching on quite fast in India — and accounts for four out of the five most expensive shows to advertise on for the 2005-2006 season. Indian laws dealing with latest technologies are in place, yet it has been difficult to implement the rules. In the case of the school boy and girl police have not acted, as there has been no complaint so far. The broader—and darker— question is whether youth are being sent mixed messages. It is difficult to make a case for abstinence and chastity in a society where sex is used to sell everything from boot polish to detergent and Bollywood starlets are all too keen to shed what little stands between their birthday costume and the lascivious viewer. Nor should technology per se be blamed. The real trouble lies in the schizoid Indian mindset when it comes to sexuality—sex is both taboo and endlessly titillating. Consequently teenagers lose respect when they see the adult world of paradox. The most sensible and mature way of dealing with the prickly issue of sexual mores is to come clean; hiding under the cozy blanket of Puritanism serves nobody. The latest gadgets have only brought this issue to a head. - Siddharth Srivastava is the India correspondent for Siliconeer. He is based in New Delhi. |TOP| OUTSOURCING DIGEST:  Outsourcing Digest: Siliconeer presents of the latest news from the world of outsourcing. Double Staff ... Now, Pathology Services BPO ... India Meets Global Standard: Survey ... VCs on India Trail ... Speech Technology: A Threat ... HR Outsourcing Next Big Opportunity ... HCL Ireland Center to Grow ... BenQ to Make India Software Hub Double Staff Intelenet Global Services, the 50:50 BPO joint venture between Housing Development Finance Corporation and Barclays Bank Plc, is looking at more than doubling its headcount, to around 10,000 employees, by January ’06. The company plans to be listed on the stock exchanges in the next 2-3 years. Talking to the media here on Monday, Barclays CEO (UK Banking) Roger Davis said the concerns over data security is more of a red herring used by some U.S. companies, politicians and media to oppose outsourcing. Intelenet currently employs 4,700 people and service 18 clients, including 6 banks, financial institutions and insurance companies. Over expanding its BPO facilities abroad, the British bank has entered into an agreement with its trade unions, which entail redeployment and training of staff rendered surplus. HDFC had bought 50 percent of Intelenet’s stake from Tata Sons some months ago for Rs. 161 crore. This stake was later sold to Barclays for Rs. 164 crore. Intelenet posted a profit of over Rs. 10 crore on a turnover Rs. 117 crore for the ’03-04 fiscal year. In the first six months of this fiscal the turnover was at Rs. 116 crore. The firm has also completed a trial with a Saudi Arabia-based hospital. Shivinder Mohan Singh of SRL Ranbaxy said India could provide pathology services 30 to 50 percent cheaper. Britain’s National Health Scheme spends £2.5 billion on pathology every year. There are three accredited pathology laboratories that carry out tests in India. India is already being projected as a destination for patients seeking quick and inexpensive health care, given the waiting periods in British hospitals. This was relevant to surgical procedures in particular, he added. Former U.K. health minister Margaret Jay said IT was already playing a major role in tele-medicine where pathology samples were sent from remote areas to cities for analysis. According to a study on the Indian healthcare industry by SKP Crossborder Consulting, the Rs. 4,000 crore (Rs. 40 billion) diagnostics and pathology laboratory testing business is growing at a compounded annual growth rate of 20 percent. While the industry has around 20,000 laboratories, only few prominent ones have any international accreditation inspiring international confidence. The industry however, could underline quality control standards here. To import blood samples for testing purp |
Software major Infosys Technologies Dec. 18 got shareholders’ approval for its secondary sponsored American Depository Shares of 16 million shares.
U.S.-based IT company Veritas Software said Dec. 15 it hired 400 engineers in India in 2004 to take the workforce to 1,000.
Tata Steel and the Indian Insti-tute of Technology, Kharagpur, have joined hands to start a new dedicated course in iron and steel engineering. Disclosing this to reporters in Chennai Dec. 20, Tata Steel managing director B. Muthuraman said the course has been designed to cater to the needs of the iron and steel industry.