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McAfee speaks to its customers, boosts sales with animated 'Avatar'

McAfee Inc., a Santa Clara, Calif.-based provider of security software, faced a challenge marketing one of its b2b products, ASaP VirusScan. Visitors to the company's online store didn't completely understand that ASaP VirusScan, its managed VirusScan product, was just that-managed. As a result, conversion rates were very low. The online store had plenty of browsers but many fewer buyers.

Looking to give customers more information without making the site too text-heavy, McAfee chose Flash-based technology from Oddcast Inc., a company that designs animated virtual characters, or "VHosts." McAfee needed to communicate the value of its product using more than written text, which could not be achieved through static media. As compared to video, Flash loads in seconds and has a much higher penetration rate than Windows Media Player, [RealPlayer,] Shockwave and QuickTime. If customers are already abandoning midpurchase, a download requirement would serve to drive conversions down even further.

McAfee worked with Oddcast to create a female "avatar," or virtual character. McAfee conducted an A/B test, with 50% of the site's visitors randomly assigned to a page that featured the avatar and 50% directed to the same page minus the Flash component. Potential customers listened to the avatar's audio message 81% of the time, Gavlak said. As a result, the average close rate for customers who saw the Flash-based avatar was 10% higher than for those who didn't. In fact, average daily sales went up by 10% during the time the avatar was deployed on the product site.

The VHost helped explain that customer's computers are always connected to McAfee's network operating systems. This is a compelling message for the customer and one they wanted them to fully grasp.

AMD Hopes Blades Will Slice Into Intel

AMD is sharpening its dual-core chips for blade servers in hopes of hacking away at Intel's majority market share.The company may have only 5 percent of the server industry in its pocket now, but that may change once HP, IBM and Sun Microsystems begin shipping next-generation blade servers powered by AMD's dual-core 64-bit Opteron processors.
The long-awaited chip is expected later this year -- long before Intel's dual-core Xeon processors hit the market in 2006. The dual-core Opteron is expected to increase performance over AMD's fastest chip, the 2.6GHz Opteron, because both cores will run at 1.8GHz. In addition to speed bumps, the dual-core chips also take advantage of AMD's HyperTransport technology and Direct Connect architecture. What this does is create an opportunity for the blade markets, as you can have one core crunching numbers while the other one is handling a security problem or a firmware update. AMD is the leader in the market when it comes to selling x86-based servers,and as soon as the dual-core processors are shipping, HP will include them in their product line. Eventually, the entire blade family to dual-core, because it has huge potential for customers looking to get more computing power with less wattage.

Blade computing is clearly on the rise and very popular among ISPs and ASPs for applications such as e-mail, Web hosting and domain name serving. Analyst firm IDC recently forecast the market to reach $3.7 billion in revenue by 2006 and $6 billion by 2007. Also in its favor, AMD has an installed base with telecommunications and financial services providers, which have been snatching up Opteron blades en masse.

But one thing AMD is trying to avoid is becoming a niche player. That is why the upcoming dual-core processors have the same pin count as the single-core processors. Having the same pin count allows manufacturers to drop in single-core and dual-core processors, and all you need is an upgrade to the BIOS firmware. You don't need different chipsets, and you don't need to update the drivers.

Microsoft and EU reach agreement

Microsoft has bowed to pressure from the European Commission to name a new version of its Windows XP software, Windows XP Home Edition N.

It is the US software giant's latest step in complying with the EU, following a record anti-trust fine imposed on it last year. The 'N' in the new name stands for "not with media player". The EU said Microsoft's first choice, Windows XP Reduced Media Edition, could have put consumers off the new version. Brussels last year fined Microsoft 497m euros ($640m; £343m) and ordered it to sell a version of its Windows XP software without its Media Player. After rejecting 10 earlier ideas from Microsoft, the Commission proposed Windows XP Home Edition N and Microsoft has agreed. The new edition, already provided to computer makers, could go on sale in Europe within weeks. Microsoft's dispute with the Commission last year centred around it using its dominant position in the desktop operating software market to limit competition in related areas, such as in audiovisual software. It was bundling its Media Player audiovisual software in with Windows XP, which discouraged customers from downloading rival products, Brussels found. Key competitors for Microsoft's Media Player include RealNetworks' RealPlayer and Apple's Quicktime.

India's Tata Steel to hike steel prices

The Tata Iron and Steel Company Ltd (BSE:900474) will raise its long term contract prices by up to 20 per cent, effective April 1, 2005, resulting in an increase in prices of Rs 5,000 (US$114.48) per tonne. The company did not raise prices for long term contracts since July last year, despite sharp hikes in the raw material costs, Tata Steel Managing Director B Muthuraman told reporters here Thursday. Long-term contract contributes 75-80 per cent of the company's total steel volume, he said. According to industry sources, other steel manufacturers, including Steel Authority of India Ltd (SAIL), are also planning to hike prices. Meanwhile, Tata Steel received shareholders'' approval for raising additional long term resources up to Rs 50 billion (US$1.1 billion) through various instruments, including foreign currency convertible bonds and equity offerings. The company also received shareholders'' permission for raising its borrowing limit to Rs 105 billion from the present Rs 50 billion. On the group's plans for Bangladesh, Tata Group chairman Ratan Tata said a study is being undertaken in the country and investment plans would be finalised depending on the outcome of the study.

BPO revenues to touch $134 b in 2005

Worldwide revenue in business process outsourcing (BPO) is projected to reach $133.7 billion in 2005, an 8 per cent increase from the 2004 revenue of $123.8 billion, according to a Gartner study.
"A year ago, BPO providers and prospective buyers held many discussions, but few deals were signed," said Ms Lisa Stone, Research Vice-President at Gartner. "The level of activity we are seeing now reflects the fact that the value proposition behind BPO has been accepted by buyers. Through year-end 2005, prospective buyers will be energised, creating a seller's market," she added.

With such a high demand for BPO, prospective buyers need to make sure that BPO providers have enough qualified personnel to meet the demand. Many new vendors will be coming into the market that lacks particular domain expertise. Buyers should assess if their company's BPO opportunity is compelling from a vendor perspective. This can be analyzed by evaluating whether the type of BPO offered aligns with the provider's strategic direction, and how committed the provider is to staying in that market.

If a company is considering new BPO projects, it must begin to develop a BPO strategy and make decisions soon. Companies must consider if BPO offers an opportunity for them to improve services without capital investment, offload non-core services or reduce operational costs. The sooner prospective buyers can start meaningful discussions with providers, the more likely they will be able to get the BPO vendor's attention.

Mauritius - paving the way to become a cyber island

With a line of credit of up to $100 million from the Indian Government, designed by C.R. Narayana Rao and built by Larsen and Toubro and Shapoorji Pallonji, the sugar estate at Ebene, a suburb of the capital has become the symbol of the island's aspiration to transform itself from a sugarcane-dependent economy to a cyber island.

The building was formally inaugurated on 01/Apr/2005 by the Prime Minister, Dr Manmohan Singh, at an elegant function to cap a highly successful bilateral visit. Featuring about 4,500 metres of office space, half the size of Tidel Park in Chennai, it is already home to two Indian companies: Infosys and Hinduja TMT. Infosys uses it at as a strategic disaster recovery site and also for software development. It has about 50 engineers who were recruited from the local engineering university and then trained at its special facility at Mysore. Mauritius hopes that it can be the bridge for Indian software and business process outsourcing companies to markets in the French-speaking areas of Africa, in France and in Canada.

Gmail space: One, two,... Infinity?

Google's e-mail service Gmail's announcement for its first birthday: Google would like to offer infinite storage to Gmail users! Now hold on, they would only like to. But what they are going to do is to increase the e-mail storage limit to 2 GB for all users. What can you do with 2 GB? Well, for one thing, you can forget about checking your e-mail this summer holiday and not be bothered about your e-mail account bouncing messages because you don't have enough free space.

Another major feature is free POP access and automatic mail forwarding. POP access is the technology that allows you to check your Webmail account from a desktop email program such as Outlook, Outlook Express, or Thunderbird. You can keep a record of your important messages and replies on your computer. Automatic mail forwarding is a feature where every e-mail message that you receive in your Gmail account will be forwarded to another e-mail account specified by you. Suppose you are travelling and can't or won't access the Gmail account you use for work, but want to forward the messages to a colleague, you can do that without having to disclose your account information.

There are a couple of other nifty features (no, that's not Nifty Futures): A mail notifier which will let you know when new messages arrive along with the sender and subject information; and a rich text formatting option that lets you add colour and highlight text apart from what you can do with WordPad (in Windows).

Google, as usual, has again managed to raise the bar for the provision and expectations from common Internet tasks. It is a good thing for the consumer when other companies follow, and even better if they try to go one up on Google