Monday, November 24, 2014

ASBM Business Updates Vol. 3(21) 24 Nov 2014, Monday from Chanakya Central Library, Asian School of Business Management, Bhubaneswar.



ASBM Business Updates is a Weekly Selective Compilation of Business News from Various Sources. To find details follow the link.

BUSINESS
Commercial operations of the first 1,000 MW unit of Kudankulam nuclear power project is now expected to start by January 22, 2015, as an earlier deadline could not be met due to technical problems.
The Nuclear Power Corporation, which is implementing the 2,000 MW plant, has received permission from the Central Electricity Regulatory Commission (CERC) for extending the deadline for commercial operation.
The plant, having two units of 1,000 MW capacity each, is being set up with technical cooperation of Russia. The first unit could not start commercial operations by the earlier specified date of October 22 on account of certain technical problems.
Nuclear Power Corp submitted before the CERC that technical problem relating to the turbine would be resolved by December 22, 2014 and sought one month time “for eventualities” during the rectification work.
Taking into consideration the technical problem, the regulator in an order dated November 10 has allowed Nuclear Power Corp to inject infirm power into the grid for the commissioning tests including full load test of the first unit till January 22, 2015.
Infirm power refers to supply that is not committed and mainly fed into the grid as part of testing purposes.
At Unit-I, the first and second stage turbine blades and diaphragm have been damaged which are being replaced by taking from Unit-II, according to Nuclear Power Corp.

BUSINESS COMMUNICATION


Microsoft has announced the next version of Lync will be known as Skype for Business. Available in the first half of 2015, it will have new client experience, server release and updates for the Office365 service.
“We’re really excited about how Skype for Business takes advantage of the strengths of both Skype and Lync,” says Gurdeep Pall, corporate vice president, Skype. It is said Skype for Business will showcase the familiar experience of Skype and the enterprise security, compliance and control of Lync.
In order to make the interface similar to Skype, Microsoft is changing various elements including the addition of ‘icons’ for calling, adding video and enabling a call.
There will also be a ‘call monitor’ window, similar to that used in Skype, so the call remains visible in a smaller window when users are also focusing on another application.
Some existing elements of Lync have been updated, including content sharing and telephony.

FINANCE
Taxi-hailing app Uber plans to set up national level operations in India, a shift from its typical model operated across different countries where a skeletal workforce operates city-centric business, even as it expands its footprint into new cities in its largest and fastest growing market outside the US. The popular app, which introduced a mobile wallet for cashless payments on Wednesday, now plans to add a managerial layer on top of its existing operations in 10 cities where it offers high quality taxi rides, while it plans to hire hundreds of people on city-level operations across the country.
"We're a start-up but increasingly as the number of cities grow, there is so much that our teams in each market are working on," Allen Penn, head of Asia operations at Uber, told ET. "It makes sense to add some extra levels, so that the core remains at the city-level where the action is," he said, while adding that Uber will be looking to hire strategic finance managers and community operations managers who would oversee city operations across India, which is growing at 40% month-on-month. "We want to make sure that India retains that crown."

INTERNATIONAL BUSINESS
The Finnish company is not closing its door for renewed success and is thinking of strategies on how to revive its brand name after it was acquired by Microsoft for $7 billion. Nokia's chief executive Rajeev Suri revealed the company's plan to make a comeback to the consumer world. In an investor's presentation in London, Suri shared the company's aim to have the brand licensed to other firms. He said that to start up with a new handset will not be feasible enough for them. Apparently, licensing is the best opportunity that the company is looking at and the potential of other tech companies paying Nokia to use its brand name on their products, Reuters reports. Last week, Microsoft has officially dropped the Nokia name on its latest Lumia 535 smartphone.  This year the company's brand ranking fell to an extremely low, sinking at number 98 among the world's best known corporate names.  According to a survey by market researcher Interbrand, this year's ranking is very low compared to its fifth rank back in 2007.

MANAGEMENT
The Docker container virtualization technology has proved to be such a hit with its users that Amazon Web Services has created a new management tool for handling large scale Docker deployments, though observers worry it could lock customers more tightly into the Amazon ecosystem. On Thursday, Amazon Web Services debuted the EC2 Container Service, now available as a preview, which provides a way for AWS users to easily deploy and manage up to hundreds of thousands of Docker containers.
The EC2 Container Service is "a highly-scalable, high-performance, container management service," said Amazon Chief Technology Officer Werner Vogels, who introduced the EC2 Container Service at the company's annual Re:Invent user conference, being held this week in Las Vegas.
A Docker container can be used to package applications so they can be easily moved across different servers. Introduced last year, the technology has already proved to be an immense success--the software has thus far been downloaded over 50 million times, according to the company Docker, which oversees the open source software of the same name.

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Source of Information for this issue : Google alert accessed on Google alert on Nov 17th & 18th,  2014
 
We welcome your suggestions in improving this information updating service.
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Best wishes
Compilation
Sabita Sahu
Junior Librarian
Concept, Layout and Editing
Syamaghana Mohanty
Chief Librarian
Information and Documentation Divison, Chanakya Central Library
Asian School of Business Management
Shiksha Vihar Bhola,
Barang Khurda Road, Chandaka
Bhubaneswar-754012
www.asbm.ac.in
Tel: 0674-2374832, 2374833
E-mail: library@asbm.ac.in, chieflibrarian@asbm.ac.in
 

Sabita Sahu :Junior Librarian Knowledge and Information Services Unit, Chanakya Central Library, Asian School of Business Management, Bhubaneswar. library@asbm.ac.in ; www.asbm.ac.in

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