Despite ongoing uncertainty over demand and fears of surplus capacity depressing prices, ACC Ltd., India's foremost manufacturer of cement, has decided to invest Rs 1,600 crore in 2009 and another Rs 1,300 crore next year.

The company officials unveiled the investment plans at the 73rd annual general meeting in Mumbai on Wednesday. ACC stated in a communiqué that it will enhance capacity at Bargarh plant to 2.3 million tonnes (mt) with a 30 MW captive power plant, which is expected to complete by mid-2009.

In addition, the company is also setting up two greenfield grinding plants in Karnataka which would go on steam by the end of the year.

Engineering and construction firm Larsen & Toubro has informed that it has bagged various orders worth Rs 605 crore in the last quarter of financial year 2009.

Providing details regarding the latest orders bagged, the company said, that it has received Rs 165 crore order from the Andhra Pradesh Government for supplying potable water, which has to be completed in 15 months.

Further, the company has received Rs 133 crore order from the Delhi Jal Board for designing and laying pipelines. The project is scheduled to be completed in 21 months.

IOL Chemicals and Pharmaceuticals Limited, a leading organic chemicals manufacturer and supplier, has announced that it will hire around 400 new employees by the end of this year.

The company has an existing workforce of over 900 professionals.

Market experts believe that despite the global economic slowdown, this is a big step by Ludhiana-based IOLCP towards preparing itself to tap global opportunities in the pharmaceutical industry.

Seeing the growing popularity of the software-as-a-service (SaaS) model for e-mail, the information technology research firm, Gartner has predicted that the future of the software-as-a-service (SaaS) platform is bright. According to the recently released study by Gartner, the software-as-a-service (SaaS) market for email will swell strongly in next 3 years.

The Gartner study has articulated that the software-as-a-service (SaaS) market, which represented just 1% of the commercial e-mail market in 2007, is expected to grow to 20 percent by 2012.

The developer of mobile social networking application, RockeTalk has released an easy-to-use Mobile 2.0 social application, which is accessible on any GPRS-enabled mobile, and RockeTalk has got into partnership with Indiatimes (Times Internet Limited) for ad sales & mobile content on its latest version of mobile social application.

RockeTalk Mobile 2.0 social application offers photos, videos, send text & voice messages, multimedia content download for mobile, and Instant Messenger (IM) chat features with Yahoo, Google Talk, MSN and AIM. The users can access content via m. rocketalk. com.

One of the largest product development centers for IBM globally, the IBM India Software Lab (ISL) on Tuesday showcased real world technologies at the 'Made in IBM Labs Day' in Hyderabad. The showcased real-world technologies included Medical Analytics Platform (Map), Drug Pedigree and Traceability Solutions, Threat and Fraud Detection Using Entity Analytics, Trusted Identity Solution, and Going Green With Dynamic Infrastructure.