Yahoo announced that they are opening up their search results for third party data integration. This will allow third party to contribute to Yahoo search experience and make it more useful for their users. It will be interesting to see how other webmasters use this open search platform to gain popularity by sharing data with Yahoo, while still retaining their competitive edge, by virtue of their database, in their respective area. We can expect to experience a long-tail of innovation in days to come. This will help webmasters, visitors and Yahoo! A perfect win-win-win situation.

On the other hand, Google already have a open platform called Google Co-op, where anyone can create custom search engine. As per Google Co-op,

"Google Co-op is a platform that enables you to customize the web search experience for users of both Google and your own website."

Google also offer Google Subscribed Links which in their own language they define as:

"Subscribed Links let you create custom search results that users can add to their Google search pages. You can display links to your services for your customers, provide news and status information updated in near-real-time, answer questions, calculate useful quantities, and more"

The challenge

However, both the services that Google offers, has a great deal of focus on promoting Google, Google Search & Google Subscribed Links. Again, they are not directly making any change in the Google Search (at least it has not be publicly explained how it will effect user experience of a normal search).

Therefore, Google Search or Yahoo Search cannot be termed as true "user contributed" or "Web2.0" as described by Tom O’Reilly. People won’t contribute unless they see that their contribution is making a positive impact in the search pattern and it is visible. In the current state both Subscribed Link and Yahoo Open Search will only help if a user wants to use the enhanced engine. Most Internet users will never switch these engines. Even if they are told the benefit of the plug-ins, how are they supposed to select the ones which will help them from a collection of thousands of user contributed plug-in channels? And what happens when new plug-ins come out?

Suggested solution

If search engines want to go the Web2.0 way with user contribution enhancing the overall experience and defining the way search engines display results, they need to bring user contributions to the mainstream. I feel that themed searches are the way to go. Google / Yahoo shall classify a particular user contributed plug-in into a theme. When a visitor wants to search for a business, he may choose a "Finding a business" theme. On a contrary when a visitor wants to learn about the subject he may chose the "Tutorial" theme.

Let us see an example.

We search for a very competitive keyword - "web design". This is the result we get.

If you see, there are three different intents that the search result satisfies. A person might be searching "web design" because he:

• Want to find a web design company (blue marker)
• Want to learn web design (red marker)
• Get web design resources (green marker)

All three intents are very different. Most people do not type-in their intent in the search box to make it a specific search, because they are not specialists in using search engines. Therefore, a search engine should suggest a possible intent and display results only related to the given theme. The theme model can best work when they are formed based on a collection of user generated plug-ins. Thus user generated content can find its way to the end user in an organized way.

It goes without saying that pulling in the user generated content directly into the main search result has its challenge of weeding out spam. But this seems to be the most logical way as of now. 

Apart from doing software / web development on Open-source platform, Indus Net Technologies also customize and implement open-source products for clients on demand. Some popular (and free) open-source products are SugarCRM, Drupal, osCommerce for CRM, content management and e-commerce respectively.

IMHO, these are some limitations that I have observed. It is important to know them before initiating a project. These are not very serious in nature and using free open-source products remains a good option for many small and medium sized enterprises around the world.

1. Like any product, it is very important to align the product with your workflow and/or requirements. You must fit the product into the organization by making necessary changes. Therefore a gap analysis should be done and the effort must be estimated for aligning the product as per the current work-flow and/or requirements.

2. Most free open-source products lacks in usability. Therefore if you are doing a major implementation which will be used by thousands of people and you are going to pay for their time, you must consider a major overhaul of interface by involving a usability consultant from your vendor. Otherwise you will end up spending a lot of money.

3. Most free open-source products have very poor reporting system. These reports are not good enough to run a business and shall be re-done as per your company requirement aligned with your key measurement matrix for the given business function.

4. The programmers who can change the software as per your needs are the code-hackers types, who love to dive into existing system architecture and make small changes to achieve the desired results. Therefore you must identify and hook up with the right programmer / programming company (like Indus Net Technologies - a bit of shameless self promotion) to get it right.

5. It is a myth, that implementing open-source software is free. Software code is free, not the hard work of programmers and analysts which goes behind implementing it. And you need the later to successfully implement it in your scenario and reap the benefits of the solution. Yes, it considerably reduces the cost, improves reliability and gives you a head start from where you can take informed decision about your IT needs.

Do not get me wrong. I am only listing the limitations. The benefits are well-known and they out-live the limitations any day. However it is very important that these limitations are known before proceeding.

Feel free to discuss / debate!

Department of Information Technology, Government of West Bengal (www.itwb.org) is doing a remarkable work in supporting and nurturing IT industry in the state of West Bengal. Their investor-friendly approach and innovative action-oriented leadership has changed West Bengal over last five years. I am fortunate to be doing business in this state in such exciting times!

They have put up their vision as:

• To Rank among top-3 IT States of India by 2010
• Contribute 15% - 20% of the country’s total IT revenues
• Create leadership position in executing high value-added IT work - developed through intellectual leadership and supported by Government initiatives

Their solid track record might just enable them to pull up and meet these targets. However, I seriously doubt that this position can be achieved and / or sustainable in long term. There are two core issues, which if not checked immediately will result in serious decline in the position that has been created with the initial efforts.

1. The poor quality of education
2. Indifferent attitude towards homegrown small and medium sized IT companies

Poor quality of education

Knowledge industry needs top quality human resource that are well educated, thoroughly knowledgeable and well groomed. Unfortunately our education system is inadequate and we are not creating employable talent.

• IT education has become a low paid job and is mostly taken up by individuals who are unable to make it to the professional ranks in IT companies.
• The education system is still based on text-books and spoon-fed course materials. Reading outside the prescribed text-books is hardly encouraged and/or practiced. This has resulted in a huge pool of IT resource pool with no individuality and poor problem solving capabilities.
• Quality education has become privilege of an elite few who go to the top ranking institutions and comprise less than 1% of the total resource pool. It is unfortunate that most of these individuals decide to join companies outside India for better pay-packages draining away one-million-per-student from taxpayers money!
• IT education has been limited to "programming"! I have spoken to thousands of It graduates and they have no idea that there are career opportunities in fields like testing, publishing, project management, etc.
• Current education system revolves around imparting IQ and not EQ, which is most important for success
• The current education system is biased towards commercially successful companies and their technologies like Microsoft and Sun. Low cost and easy-to-implement open source frameworks are ignored and are positioned as "alien" technologies which "does not have any career opportunities" to the students.
• The general attitude, that has been built up among youngsters who are going for a job is to find a safe-secure job in a reputed stable company. They are not encouraged to take risk and help grow new leaders for the economy. It is very important to have a general "rough it out" attitude to make a place a hot destination for growing great companies. This is the reason some locations are very successful in creating great companies, while others lack far behind.

Indifferent attitude towards homegrown small and medium sized IT companies

I have personally felt that the state government has an indifferent attitude towards homegrown small and medium sized IT companies. It seems that their action plan clearly talks about getting external investment from successful IT companies worldwide. In short term this looks like a very good solution as it will get major investment in a short period of time and they will find their graph moving towards their projected figures. However in long term, it is very difficult to achieve sustainable and long term growth without tapping into the local entrepreneurial capabilities.

If you see the IT industry in Kolkata, you will hardly find a homegrown IT company who features among the top software exporters from West Bengal. In fact most of the home grown companies collectively do not employ even 25% IT workforce of Kolkata. We do not have any national hero or brand, which has made a mark on the national / global platform. When we go to global expositions like IndiaSoft and CeBIT, you do not see any company from West Bengal competing against the national players in the global marketplace.

Some basic reasons I can see are:

• There is no affordable workspace for small and medium sized IT companies except SDF Building and a couple other locations built and operated by government or a government agency like Webel. There is major discrepancy in allocation of office space and land to small and medium sized businesses.
• The law and order system is not up to the mark and in tune with possible cyber crimes. 90% of the police stations do not have any idea about cyber crime. If they land up investigating one, they will try to get rid of the same by harassing you to an extent that you will give up. Most of the police workforce is either not trained about white collar crime or they pretend not to know the subject. It is a known fact that crime rate is highest in small and medium sized enterprises, and most of them go unnoticed.
• We get to deal with government official everyday, who does not know their own work. They come from different departments and confuse you to such an extent that you see no other option, but to bribe them and satisfy them!
• Government is more interested in job creation than value creation. They are less interested in the quality and sustainability of jobs that are being created. Also, there is lesser emphasis on profitability of companies that exist. The economic eco-system works on value creation, which leads of job creation. This is not the other way around.  
• Small and medium sized IT companies are not communicated the benefits they are entitled to! This results in a scenario that all the benefits are enjoyed by a select few.
• The benefit claim process is very cumbersome and an IT business which needs a level of agility to perform optimally will not be able to claim the benefits they are entitled to, unless they put in considerable amount of effort behind the same or forge the paperwork!

Again, I personally believe that it is not the responsibility of educational institutions and government to push a business. However, for economic growth of a state which has been lying at the bottom of the economic chart for last thirty years, there needs to be initiative to creative a conductive environment.

Without most of these issues addressed, I do not see any long term sustainable growth of IT industry in West Bengal.

I wish I am wrong.

Abhishek