Festive Season puts Spring Back In Sales of Cars & Scooters..

Automobile manufacturers are certainly feeling the festive cheer with October aiding a sharp turnaround in sales and bringing, alongwith Diwali, a bright growth outlook for the full year. While market leader Maruti's car sales jumped 22 per cent, Hyundai topped sales in the segment with a 41 per cent increase. Tata Motors' sales rose 18 per cent.
"The festive period of the last two months generated strong sales and has given the Indian automobile industry some respite from the sluggish performance of the last few months. It looks that this period of strong sales would propel the industry to a positive double digit growth for the remainder of the year. This might be the turning point the industry has been waiting for," said Arvind Saxena, senior vice-president, Hyundai Motors India.
Honda Siel Cars India (HSCI) surprised the market by growing 347 per cent selling 6,909 units this October over 1,546 units last October. While it does have a small base and sales had plunged during last year's lacklustre festive season, the New Honda City is becoming the car to beat in the sedan segment, accounting for 5,129 units of HSCI sales.
Segment leader Maruti Suzuki started the new quarter strongly with a 22 per cent growth thanks to sales of 71,383 units in October over 58,515 units sold during the same month last year. Hyundai, its nearest competitor, sold 28,301 units this October, growing 41.44 per cent over last October's 20,009 units. Despite having been overtaken by Hyundai, Tata Motors has shown consistent signs of a recovery. Where 17,014 units were sold in October last year, 28,310 units were sold in the same month this year, including 3,018 Tata Nanos, giving Tata Motors a 17.61 per cent growth increase.
General Motors registered sales of 7,413 units over the 6,465 units in October 2008. This gives the company a 14.66 per cent growth increase, which GM executives said could have been higher were it not for non-delivery of a number of orders "due to supply constraints of some of the parts". Fiat's new models continue to do well, selling 2,221 units this October. In 2008, before Fiat expanded its portfolio with the Linea and Grand Punto brands they sold 364 units, giving it a disproportionate 508.77 per cent growth. Sales of the Mahindra Logan also continued its consistent decline by 62.42 percent. In October 2008, 1,067 units were sold whereas 401 units were sold in that same month this year.
In the two-wheeler, segment for the first time in over a year, Bajaj appears to be making a comeback and Honda's sales haven't been quite as extraordinary as one has come to expect. Though they continue outsell their nearest rivals by over a lakh units, Honda only grew 0.48 per cent in what has been a very good start to the festive season for everyone else. The company sold 3,54,156 units in October against 3,52,449 units in 2008. Bajaj sold 2,49,974 units this October — a 51.06 per cent jump in sales.

Cloud Computing: The Power Of One..

In their quest to find answers, experts have demonstrated that the future of medical discoveries, environmental challenges, energy deficit, all lie in collaborating through Cloud Computing.
With Cloud Computing, users have been able to access data, share expertise and high-end infrastructure from around the world, and vice-versa. The resources are shared through a public platform like the internet. Several companies like Amazon, IBM, Microsoft, etc have invested heavily as they reach out to users.
Cloud Computing companies have customers of three kinds -
• Infrastructure-as-a-service: Option of renting and utilizing computing power and storage capacity of vendor's quality.
• Software-as-a-Service (SaaS): Vendors license particular services to subscribers on-demand and once the contract expires, the services are disabled.
• Platform-as-a-Service: Here a developer is given the opportunity to utilize various web-tools to build and host applications.
The Cloud (other computers in the network) does have its pros and cons in this formative stage. Its advantages include,
• Better performance by PCs in the cloud network, as fewer processing will be loading in each individual PC, the rest on the Cloud.
• No more spending on computer upgrades, instead services of another high-power PC can be made use of.
• Lesser hardware and software required, so costs of maintenance are tremendously lowered.
• Permanence of data, as all information stays in the cloud, even if you experience a hard-disk crash.
• Sync with experts worldwide on multiple projects and avail optimum results through the Cloud.
• Work from any PC and on the move, with the availability of internet access.
Cloud Computing also has some drawbacks like,
• The over-dependence on the providers.
• The reliability of the vendors.
• Protection laws in different countries vary. For eg, according to EU data protection regulation, personal information cannot be transferred outside the European Economic Area.
• Threat of unauthorized access to confidential data.
• Requires internet throughout and near-impossible to work with dial-up connections.
The concept isn't entirely new and is evolving even today. In the recent past, several variations have been introduced through 'Grid' and 'Utility Computing'.
- Grid Computing is a virtual super-computer formed by a cluster of computers in concert, each performing complex tasks.
- Utility Computing is a format in which subscribers are charged based on their usage, similar to the way in electricity is charged.
As new developments take place with increasing frequency, your world is on the brink of transition.