Tech MNCs don mentor hat, give start-ups low-cost tools

BANGALORE: It is not money alone that can kick-start a new venture. Access to the latest software tools, advice on how to pitch a business

India's top 10 BPOs The rise of multinational IT in India Key facts on India's IT industry Top acquisitions in BPO space

proposal and introduction to prospective customers are equally important pieces of the start-up puzzle, as scores of technology start-ups are finding out.

Until six months ago, Chennai-based information technology outfit OrangeScape would use 50-100 servers, managed round the clock by about 10 employees, to help build and host web applications for a roster of big-ticket clients. “It was a nightmare to manage over 50-100 servers, we couldn’t afford that,” said Suresh Sambandam, founder & CEO, OrangeScape, who then sought help from search giant Google to use their suite of free and open source tools. “We were able to get on Google’s cloud platform on the right time and now we don’t need any of the virtual servers,” Mr Sambandan added.

Elsewhere in Bangalore, Gradatim IT Ventures, a start-up that provides technology tools to clients in the financial sector, also received a welcome boost when they signed onto the Microsoft BizSpark network that allowed them to access licensed software free of cost. “Typically, such licensing would have cost us $200,000 that I can now instead use to build my business,” said CV Prakash, founder & CEO, Gradatim.

Rogue antivirus program comes with tech support

In an effort to boost sales, sellers of a fake antivirus product known as Live PC Care are offering their victims live technical support.

According to researchers at Symantec Corp., once users have installed the program, they see a screen, falsely informing them that their PC is infected with several types of malware. That's typical of this type of program. What's unusual, however, is the fact that the free trial version of Live PC Care includes a big yellow "online support" button.

Clicking on the button connects the victim with an agent, who will answer questions about the product via instant message.

Symantec says the agent is no automated script, but in fact a live person. This lends an "air of legitimacy" to the program, said Marc Fossi, a manager of development with Symantec Security Response. "Obviously if they've got live tech support, it must be real," he joked.

The tech support doesn't help much, though. According to Symantec, the support staff simply try to convince victims to shell out between US$30 and $100 for the product.

This isn't the first time a fake security product has been spotted offering tech support. Another company called Innovative Marketing operated a call center to support its security products, including a program called WinFixer. According to security experts, Innovative Marketing's tech support technicians acted in the same way as Live PC Care's, trying to reassure victims that they were buying a legitimate product.

These so-called rogue antivirus products can sometimes lower security settings on a victim's computer. At best, they offer a false sense of security because the products never protect computers from the latest security threats.

Rogue antivirus has been a major headache for users over the past year. It is often installed via annoying pop-up ads that try to convince the victim that something is wrong with their PC. Symantec tracked 43 million rogue AV installation attempts between July 2008 and July 2009.

Xirrus Resolves Growing Demand for Web Self Help with iSolve

Softlib Software, a provider of Solution Identification software for Web Self-Help, technical support centers and helpdesk teams, recently announced that Xirrus, Inc., aWiFi ( News - Alert) Switching provider, picked Softlib iSolve software for its online customer and partner support.

Softlibs software helps customers reduce costs considerably while enhancing service to end users as well as customers. Softlibs customers include financial institutions, telecom companies, technology vendors and government agencies. Softlib products are widely used on thousands of computers across the world.

Presently iSolve powers support.xirrus.com which allows Xirrus customers and partners to find the information required quickly and easily they need without having to call up and consulting an expert. This allows Xirrus to provide enhanced as well as 24x7 service by leveraging the Web as a scalable Support channel. The content is delivered actively based on intelligent free text search and user credential level.

Xirrus is the only WiFi “Power-Play” that manufactures the Wi-Fi Array architecture that replaces both overlay WiFi offerings and switched Ethernet to the desktop, according to the company. Being a rapidly growing technology company with a passion to provide premier service to its customers and partners, Xirrus was on the look out for technology which could accurately provide solutions to issues put forward and optimizing home grown content automatically while smoothly integrating with existing systems like their Service Desk system. The technology which they would choose also needed to provide the content through natural language search and not depend on FAQs or pre-authored content in order to lower the cost of ownership and provide knowledge to end users faster.

Xirrus decided to chose iSolve due to its capabilities like Intelligent natural language search; Unique solutions grouping for simplified presentation; Seamless integration with existing information sources and applications and Deployment in days.

http://www.techsupportleaders.com/

Rogue Antivirus Program Comes With Tech Support

According to researchers at Symantec, once users have installed the program, they see a screen, falsely informing them that their PC is infected with several types of malware. That's typical of this type of program. What's unusual, however, is the fact that the free trial version of Live PC Care includes a big yellow "online support" button.

Clicking on the button connects the victim with an agent, who will answer questions about the product via instant message.

Symantec says the agent is no automated script, but in fact a live person. This lends an "air of legitimacy" to the program, said Marc Fossi, a manager of development with Symantec Security Response. "Obviously if they've got live tech support, it must be real," he joked.

The tech support doesn't help much, though. According to Symantec, the support staff simply try to convince victims to shell out between US$30 and $100 for the product.

This isn't the first time a fake security product has been spotted offering tech support. Another company called Innovative Marketing operated a call center to support its security products, including a program called WinFixer. According to security experts, Innovative Marketing's tech support technicians acted in the same way as Live PC Care's, trying to reassure victims that they were buying a legitimate product.