Symphony Services is set to further expand its Indian operations with the addition of about 1,000 people during the year with thrust on embedded systems design business, reports The Hindu BusinessLine.
The technology product development services provider is scouting for another possible location for a development centre which could potentially be in Hyderabad. (more…)
US-based companies, Accenture and IBM, have seized the top two spots of the world’s best outsourcing service providers. But Indian software majors dominate the list - there are five of them among the top 10.
Infosys made it to the top three behind Accenture and IBM in the list. The Bangalore-based software major was on the Leaders List representing firms with annual sales of $60 million or more in the annual expert ranking of the world’s best outsourcing service providers compiled by the International Association of Outsourcing Professionals (IAOP).
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The Economic Times reports that India’s second-largest third party BPO firm, WNS Global Services, has decided to carve out a separate group from its existing services called the ‘business technology group’ and has moved its chief information officer, Atul Davda, to head the effort.
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India’s IT exports to the Middle East are expected to cross $1.30 billion in 2008, an increase of 30% compared to $1 billion last year, Electronics and Computer Software Export Promotion Council of India (ESC) said.
According to ESC, an autonomous body under the Indian Ministry of Communications and IT, Indian IT exports are growing at more than 30% annually and are expected to cross $50 billion this year and touch $100 billion by 2012.
City-based BPO firm Firstsource Solutions has recorded a 40 per cent dip in net profit for the fourth quarter ended March 2008 to Rs 21 crore against Rs 34.9 crore recorded in the quarter a year ago.
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In a much-awaited relief for the IT industry, software companies can now enjoy benefits of the Software Technology Parks of India (STPI) scheme for another year. The government has extended the tax concessions under Section 10A of the Income Tax Act to March 2010.
The scheme was to expire in March 2009 under the sunset clause provided in the scheme. (more…)
IT product and services company 3i Infotech has acquired the US-based Regulus Group for $80 million (about Rs 320 crore). An additional consideration of up to $20 million (Rs 80 crore) has been provided based on an earn-out linked to performance parameters.
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The Steria Centre of Excellence for Java Agile Development opened on April 28, 2008 in the presence of M. le Ministre de la Justice, Ministre du Trésor et du Budget, Sir Luc Frieden and his Excellency the ambassador of France, Sir Charles-Henri d’Aragon.
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Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) has entered into an eight-year deal worth £60 million (about Rs 478 crore) to provide ‘end-to-end’ IT applications services to UK-based water utility firm, Scottish Water.
The outsourcing engagement will enable Scottish Water to save a minimum of £8 m (about Rs 64 crore) in operating expenditure alone over the next 8 years, according to a news release from TCS.
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IT Services company Tech Mahindra has furthered its security consulting practice by partnering with Veracode, a US-based technology start-up that provides on-demand security testing platform on software as a service model.
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Mindtree Consulting and Satyam Computer Services have together won a three-year IT outsourcing deal from ArcelorMittal, the world’s largest steel making company. The contract is a part of the steel giant’s efforts to consolidate its western European IT work.
About 70 per cent of these sub-contracted activities will be carried out by the two Indian firms, ArcelorMittal said today. The overall deal size for the partnership is around $50 million (Rs 200 crore).
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News published at Livemint reports that if Patni was going to handle something like actuarial work-meaning evaluating whether or not a pension fund has enough assets to pay off promised benefits, and calculating prices and payouts for insurance policies-it would have to break it down into a process.
Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), India’s largest IT-services provider, has announced that it will open centres in Egypt, Abu Dhabi and Oman to focus more on emerging markets, especially Middle East and North Africa (Mena), owing to the sub-prime crisis and recession tendencies in the US, its main market.
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The Economic Times reports that India’s third-largest software exporter, Wipro, has started offering legal process outsourcing (LPO) services as part of the knowledge process outsourcing (KPO) services business headed by former banker and Wipro BPO senior VP Ramit Sethi.
The focus of the LPO will be to offer services such as patents and contract management rather than paralegal services and litigation support, where the clientele are mostly law firms.
Forbes reports that LogicaCMG PLC. unveiled a 110 million pound restructuring plan designed to revitalise the ailing IT services company, but the 80 million pound cost savings forecast through job cuts and the expansion of offshore operations didn’t go far enough for some analysts who are concerned about execution risk and a tightening IT services market.
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IT majors Infosys Technologies Ltd and Wipro on Thursday committed investments of Rs 500 crore each for setting up development centres near this metropolis.
Both the facilities would come up on 90 acres earmarked in the 1,200-acre IT city which would come up at Rajarhat, West Bengal IT minister Debesh Das told reporters here.
Educomp Solutions Ltd, an e-learning service provider has registered a 145 per cent rise in its net profit at Rs 31.46 crore for the quarter ended March 31, 2007 as against Rs 13. 1 crore a year ago.
The stand-alone total revenue has increased to Rs 119.53 crore for the quarter ended March 31, from Rs 51.86 crore in the year-ago period.
For the year ended March 31, Educomp posted a net profit of Rs 70.06 crore, against Rs 28.58 crore in the period under review last fiscal. Total revenue of the company increased to Rs 276.92 crore for the year ended March 31, from Rs 112.17 crore a year ago.
Business-standard reports that IT products and services company Quintegra Solutions Ltd expects a topline of $100 million (Rs 400 crore) in the financial year ended March 31, 2008 from Rs 76 crore in FY07. Shankarraman Vaidyanathan, chairman and managing director, Quintegra Solutions, said that the company would achieve organic growth at a 50 per cent peg over the next five years, coupled with a aggressive inorganic growth strategy for Europe.
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The stock of unoccupied properties with real estate developers in the main technology hubs of Bangalore and Chennai is mounting and indications are that their problems will only get worse as software companies head towards greener pastures.
In Bangalore’s Whitefield suburb, once a magnet for IT firms, supply outstripped absorption by 300,000 sq ft in 2007 and about 8% of the developed area remained vacant, data from real estate consultancy Cushman & Wakefield (C&W) show. (more…)
After bagging the Rs 140-crore deal to set up a state wide area network (SWAN) for the Maharashtra government, Spanco Telesystems and Solutions is close to winning a contract worth Rs 200 crore from Common Services Centres (CSCs).
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Business-standard reports that the Software Technology Parks of India (STPI) has appealed to the Finance Ministry to extend its STPI scheme, which promises a tax holiday to IT companies, beyond March 2009 by viewing the issue sympathetically.
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Global customer care, human resources and billing services provider Convergys Corporation has announced that it has bagged a multi-year contract from state- owned telecom service provider Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd (BSNL) for providing billing solutions.
As per the agreement, Convergys would support BSNL’s 18 million wireline subscribers. BSNL would replace its legacy billing systems with the Convergys’ Infinys [R] rating and billing solution to reduce IT costs and to facilitate the introduction and deployment of new convergent services.
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Accenture will be steadily ramping up its Indian operations and hiring 13,000 people within a year, as part of its strategy to facilitate India playing a bigger role in its global operations.
Accenture, which has a headcount of about 37,000 in India at present, intends to scale up this figure to 50,000 in the next 12 months, Mr William D. Green, Chairman and CEO, said.
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Business-standard reports that Satyam Computer Services is investing over $95 million (around Rs 380 crore) in a couple of acquisitions abroad, as part of its expansion plans to diversify its revenue base.
The company has entered into an agreement with Caterpillar Inc, the world’s leading manufacturer of construction and mining equipment, diesel and natural gas engines and industrial gas turbines.
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Tata Consultancy Services Ltd reports that India’s largest software-services company has reported its financial results for the quarter ended March 2008. The company’s net profit rose 4.15 per cent to Rs 1,245 crore as compared to the same quarter of the previous year, while revenue was up 18.13 per cent to Rs 6,098 crore.
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BPO companies in India are experimenting of breaking a complex activity into numerous simple chores, to be easily performed by even school passouts.
The dilution of task difficulty is primarily seen as a solution to talent crunch and a way to check attrition and battle wage inflation as per The Economic Times. Although it is not yet mainstream, if scaled up, it will throw up an opportunity for rural India to become the backoffice for BPO operations in metros.
British IT services firm LogicaCMG Plc is expected to announce hundreds of job losses when it presents the outcome of its strategic review on Tuesday, as new Chief Executive Andy Green focuses on more off-shoring, reports Reuters.
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Accenture has started operations of the Accenture Customer Care BPO service in the Cebu facility late last month, said Pankaj Vaish, managing director of Accenture Delivery Center Network for BPO.
Vaish and Yogesh Malhotra, senior executive and country lead of Accenture Philippines BPO delivery center, came to Cebu to announce the expansion of the operations of the company’s Cebu facility. (more…)
Overcoming the rupee appreciation and U.S economy slow down, IT major Wipro surpassed both guided margin and growth forecast for the year 2007-08, Wipro Chairman Ajim Premji said here on Friday.
Announcing Wipro’s performance for the quarter and the year ending March 31, here he said, “results for the year 2007-08 is satisfying on several fronts”.
Company recorded a revenue growth of 33 per cent YoY and net profit growth of 12 per cent YoY.
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International Business Machines Corp. announced on Wednesday that its 2008 profit would beat earlier expectations, and Infosys Technologies Ltd issued on Tuesday a better-than-anticipated outlook in terms of revenues and profit for 2008-09. On Thursday, the world’s best-known outsourcing research firm explained why these numbers have exceeded expectations. This report was published at Livemint.Both results belied concerns that had been expressed by experts and analysts over the IT industry this year in the wake of a recession in the US, the world’s largest market for IT products and services.
Effective pricing and discounting strategies are one of the key reasons why some technology professional service organizations succeed and others fail. According to the “The New Professional Service Maturity Model” benchmark report just completed by Adexta and SPI Research,
Unlike a BPO where you need to “sweat the assets” a smart KPO needs to work at both. This is what will drive sustainability, client advantage, people empowerment and make the KPO industry really a force to reckon with…
ITIL v3’s business service management approach makes it the best fit for adoption by private equity (PE) firm for deploying in their portfolio companies in order to enhance the value of their portfolio.
The commanders of India’s software service companies came together in the financial capital ‘Mumbai’ last week to celebrate, and take stock of what lies ahead. The industry is already under a cloud because of fears of strengthening rupee and the possibility of a U.S. recession.
Over the course of the last couple of years leading law firms have begun to wake up to the reality that we live and operate in a global marketplace. Technology enables an increasing array of legal support services and higher value legal work to be outsourced offshore. The legal profession is now starting to take advantage of the labor arbitrage that has been exploited by other industries for well over a decade.
SaaS (Software as a Service) or On-Demand application delivery as a disruptive delivery model is challenging traditional Enterprise applications. Adoption rate is the fastest in the SME (Small and Medium Enterprises) space. But, large multinational organizations are slow to embrace the on-demand delivery model.
Mike Vizard, Editorial Director for Ziff-Davis Enterprise makes a poignant remark about the importance of diversity in the IT department in his blog “Diversity in IT Has Become a Business Imperative”. I agree with his view that “the great issue of the day in technology is not the technology but rather the people within the IT department itself”.
Fractal is a leading provider of advanced analytics services with more than 40 clients in 15 countries. The company helps retail financial; banking and telecommunication institutions take data based decisions that enhance the effectiveness of their marketing and risk management programs.
What next in offshoring? Different folks will give different responses - Analytics, KPO, CRO, Moving up value chain, Product Development, Engineering Services, Consulting, Higher domain knowledge, Channel Development etc . This is like few blind men trying to describe an elephant. All are probably right in their own way but all are missing the big picture. This big picture in my opinion is offshoring for growth and innovation…
C Mahalingam (Mali) has more than 23 years of experience in the field of Human Resources and has held senior executive positions with leading organizations. Prior to joining Symphony Services, Mali led HR for the India operations of IBM and Hewlett-Packard as well as Philips Software Center.
vCustomer Corporation is a leading provider of cost-effective customer care solutions. We leverage the right blend of innovative technology, business analytics and industry expertise to consistently deliver customized, high quality, cost-saving contact center services.
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Sandeep Kaujalgi
In my view, the offshore business has reached a point where it has a “value add” problem. By that I mean, there is a problem that adequate value is not being added. And in many ways, this is a result of the success of the industry…
