Azim Premji, chairman of the domestic IT major Wipro, has made it to the list of the world’s 10 richest Tech Titans compiled by Forbes business magazine.

Mr Premji has been placed at the sixth position with a net worth of $13.3 billion, ahead of Google founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page, eBay founder Pierre Omidyar and founder of German business software major SAP Hasso Plattner.

Microsoft founder Bill Gates, who remained the world’s richest man for 12 consecutive years, tops the list of richest tech titans with a net worth of $50 billion.

Other IT titans in the list include Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen at second position with net worth of $22 billion; Dell founder Michael Dell at third position with a net worth of $17.1 billion; Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison at fourth rank with $16 billion and Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer at fifth position with net worth of $13.6 billion. Incidentally, Mr Premji is among the select few tech titans on the list who remains actively involved in the day-to-day operations of their companies. Three of the 10, Mr Plattner, Paul Allen and Pierre Omidyar, are not even actively involved in the companies they founded, while Mr Gates has also announced his plans to move away from the corporate world, Forbes said.

Even those tech titans remaining involved in their companies often pursue second lives outside of the office, the magazine noted. Mr Larry Ellison, who is the founder and CEO of enterprise software giant Oracle, does not even maintain an office at Oracle’s Silicon Valley headquarters. The world’s ten richest tech billionaires collectively have a net worth of $174.2 billion.

Even SAP co-founder Hasso Plattner, who has been placed at the last 10th position, ranks among the hundred richest people on the planet with an estimated net worth of $6.4 billion.

Airtel to invest over USD 100 Million to deliver a suite of unique,
innovative products, services & applications.

• Airtel reinforces & strengthens its ‘One Airtel’ innovation strategy.
• After successful innovations like Easy Charge, Easy Music, KBC, Indian Idol, games on Broadband amongst others, Airtel now takes innovation to a new level.
• World class single delivery platform to deliver innovative services including integrated portal and content management amongst others.

Reinforcing its commitment to innovation, Bharti Airtel, India’s leading telecom service provider, today announced that it has partnered with IBM to deliver India’s first ‘Service Delivery Platform’ (SDP). This platform will enable Airtel to deliver a suite of unique, innovative products, services and applications, to its over 25 million customer base which is currently growing at a rate of more than one million customers every month, spanning mobile, landline and broadband services. Airtel is investing over USD 100 Million in this world class delivery platform.

The implementation of SDP will enable Bharti Airtel to have an integrated environment that will incorporate all of Airtel’s content and applications services under one platform. Airtel’s customers can now get the benefit of a complete service experience through service personalisation, single access point, single sign-on to its mobile, landline as well as broadband and enterprise customers across the country. With this implementation, Bharti Airtel will become the first service provider in India to have a comprehensive service delivery platform. IBM will develop, manage and operate this Service Delivery Platform (SDP) for Bharti Airtel.

Announcing the agreement, Mr. Manoj Kohli, President, Bharti Airtel Ltd. said “The launch of Service Delivery Platform is yet another first from Airtel and an important component of our innovation strategy for the integrated ‘One Airtel’. The platform will be the gateway to next generation content services for our customers and help us consolidate our leadership position.”

The SDP is a recognised market leading global telecom framework, which is based on open standards and with proven implementations at telecom companies around the world. The SDP shall enhance the spectrum of content, application and services and integrate them across all of Bharti’s service lines and present a consistent presentation of services to the customers, who then shall be able to access through multiple channels viz. SMS, MMS, WAP, Web, broad band. The customers shall also be able to personalize this catalogue. The content delivered to the customers shall also be more friendly and customized as per the capability of their devices. The SDP is a comprehensive solution that integrates several ISV packages through IBM’s middleware framework running over several hardware server and storage platforms.

The content providers to Bharti Airtel shall also benefit significantly with the Service Delivery Platform. They shall be able to publish content once and distribute through multiple channels – SMS, MMS, WAP, Web, etc. Bulk uploading of content, along with protection of digital content shall also be possible now. In addition, the content providers shall be able to test new devices and content services prior to launch. The reconciliation and settlement process shall also be automated.

In addition, SDP would fuel the creation of a Bharti Airtel application developer community through standard interfaces that will allow new services to simply plug into this platform and run seamlessly across the mobile and broadband networks. The Service Delivery Platform will cover integrated portal, content management, digital rights management, transcoding systems, messaging gateway and applications parlay gateway.

Mr. Satish Khatu, General Manager, Global Technology Services, IBM Asia Pacific said, “Differentiation is key to survival and winning. IBM’s technology and services expertise along with our experience of working with Telcos across the globe, allows us to deliver one of the most comprehensive Service Delivery Platform for Bharti Airtel. This implementation allows Bharti to offer significantly enhanced spectrum of content and value-added services to its customers, enabling them to continue to maintain their competitive advantage and leadership in the marketplace and deliver an enhanced user experience