St Bill at the H1-B gates! IT majors just lovin' it
Economic TimesThe backlash was not here to stay! Cheering Bill Gates’s call to open gates to immigrants, Indian tech majors seem confident that this is the beginning of voice of support getting more vocal and the negative rhetoric dying out. "This is the voice of US, Inc," says the outsourcing brigade from Bangalore. To many, this is the impact of the tightening of visa caps earlier and the American industry is feeling the pinch now. And this will push for creating a conducive climate for skilled people to have a choice to move to countries of their choice. more...
PeopleSupport Reports Record Revenues for First Quarter 2005
PRNewswirePeopleSupport, Inc.(Nasdaq: PSPT), an offshore business process outsourcing (BPO) provider that offers customer management and accounts receivable management services forU.S.-based clients from its facilities in the Philippines, today announced financial results for its first quarter ended March 31, 2005. PeopleSupport reported record revenues of $14.1 million for the quarter ended March 31, 2005, an increase of 47% over the same period in 2004 and 12% over the fourth quarter of 2004. more...
Following the sun
ITP.netHad Adam Smith been conducting his research into the wealth of nations at the start of the twenty first century, it would almost certainly include a chapter on offshore outsourcing. In today’s age of increased globalisation, outsourcing has become a common feature of running enterprises. Just as one settles down each morning to a breakfast harvested from different regions, one similarly conducts the modus operandi of business on a multinational level.In simple terms, outsourcing is the practice where an enterprise transfers the responsibilities of one or more of its functions or activities to another company, which would otherwise have been performed from within the organisation. ‘Offshore’ signifies that companies outsource their work to companies abroad in order to leverage their expertise in that field and gain benefits in cost and quality, thereby increasing their competitiveness in turn. more...
The challenge for India is to move up its value chain further
Financial ExpressFor Raymond Spencer, the co-founder, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of the over $185-million financial services major Kanbay International, India will and continue to be the best bet for overall offshore outsourcing across the globe. According to Mr Spencer, though the slow, but steady emergence of countries like China in mainstream offshore outsourcing is happening, India is a long way ahead and continues to grow fast as large global players want to take advantage of Indian offshore models with their own operations coupled with the Indian players’ capabilities to move up the value chain quickly. more...
IT spending on the up in light of new optimism
Scotsman.comWITH a new optimism in the global IT market, it is perhaps unsurprising that four out of ten Scottish organisations expect their IT spend to increase by up to 30 per cent in the next year. Recent research carried out by Shepherd and Wedderburn suggests that Scottish businesses expect their IT spend to increase by up to 30 per cent in the next 12 months, with investment focused on software purchase and development along with hardware, including servers. Security applications, disaster recovery, storage, and document and knowledge management are also seen as key priorities. more..
Profits Soar At India's Infosys On U.S. Business
InformationWeekInfosys Technologies, India's second largest software outsourcing firm, said its quarterly net profit surged 67 percent, as U.S. companies rushed to inaugurate offshore outsourcing deals with the Bangalore-based firm. Announced Thursday, Infosys said it expected the rapid pace of growth to continue with earnings per share to increase nearly 25 percent in the year ending March, 2006. The company said it expects revenue to grow between 24.7 and 26.6 percent in the same period. The company said its client list hit 438 in the fourth quarter, as it added 37 new customers during the period. Infosys, which has launched an aggressive campaign to hire 6,000, noted that it has hired some 1,500 employees recently, bringing its total headcount above 36,000. more...
India outsourcing firms eye employee screening
ComputerworldIndia's technology firms plan to launch an employee registry program by mid-June designed to provide initial screening of tech workers for that country's burgeoning offshore industry. Interest in the security of India's offshore providers may get more attention from U.S. employers following the recent arrest in India of three former call center employees of Mphasis BFL Group in Mumbai. The three are accused of defrauding four Citibank account holders in New York of more than $300,000. more...
Sidebar: Costco Aims to Avoid Offshore Dependency
ComputerWorldRetailer Costco Wholesale Corp. uses offshore development but is still hiring lots of programmers internally. Don Burdick, senior vice president of information systems at Costco, said last week that he has about 60 vacancies for developers with RPG, .Net and Java skills on his programming staff, out of a total of 250 positions. The underlying philosophy at Issaquah, Wash.-based Costco, which had revenue of about $48 billion last year, is "that our own employees do it better," Burdick said at the Gartner outsourcing conference. He added that Costco typically promotes from within when higher-level IT jobs open up, because it wants to retain the business knowledge that workers have accumulated. more..
Offshore testing gains ground in India
Economic TimesSoftware testing, pithily defined, is the operating of a system or application under controlled conditions and evaluating results arising from those controlled conditions. But the big debate brewing is: can software de-bugging be done inhouse or should it be outsourced? According to Thinksoft Global Services, an independent testing company: “Testing is a specialised skill and task. Outsourcing to testing provides the opportunity to leverage and deploy best practices. Plus, an independent test team is unbiased and looks afresh at each test project. They usually bring with them both experience and knowledge acquired across a diverse spectrum of applications.” more...
BearingPoint opens second development facility in China
ComputerworldBearingPoint Inc. is opening its second offshore development facility in China, a move analysts see as part of a trend by U.S. firms to expand offshore development operations in that country. The McLean, Va.-based consulting firm said late last week that it has opened a 56,300-square-foot facility in Dalian, a city in the northeastern part of the country. The Dalian facility now has 60 employees, but BearingPoint hopes to have 1,000 people working there "as quickly as possible," said Craig Franklin, an executive vice president at BearingPoint and head of its Global Technology Services arm. The company, which has 15,500 employees worldwide, also runs a development facility in Shanghai with 400 employees, as well as one in Chennai, India, with 100 people. It plans to expand the Chennai facility to 1,000 workers during the next year. BearingPoint also operates a development center in Spain. more...
Reuters U.S. Journalists to Protest Offshore Outsourcing of Jobs to Mark Beginning of Legal Challenge, Guild Says
Yahoo.comU.S. employees of Reuters Group Plc (LSE: RTR - News; Nasdaq: RTRSY - News) will protest the offshore outsourcing of editorial jobs on Thursday as their union begins its legal challenge to the company's attempt to cover Wall Street from Bangalore, India, the Newspaper Guild of New York said. The Guild's charge that offshoring U.S.-based editorial jobs violates its contract with Reuters will be heard before an independent arbitrator, whose decision is binding. The case could take months to complete. As the lawyers square off, journalists and other employees will picket Reuters U.S. headquarters in Times Square and other U.S. bureaus at lunchtime to call attention to the dispute. more...
Offshore outsourcing predicted to reach 30%
ComputerWeekly.comThe number of IT jobs outsourced to India, China and other lower-cost countries from the world’s advanced economies will reach 30% by 2015, according to analyst firm Gartner. Currently less than 5% of IT jobs have gone offshore to cheaper countries from western Europe and the US, said Gartner. The analyst firm said offshore spending on application-development services will more than double from £12.77bn to £27.77bn by 2010. Gartner is currently holding a major outsourcing conference in Los Angeles. more...
2000 jobs in his sights
The Daily TelegraphNATIONAL Australia Bank's 25,000 local employees face an uncertain future.Chief executive John Stewart has turned his attention to trimming fat from the bank's Australian operations after this week axing 1700 jobs in the UK. Unions yesterday said 600 jobs are likely to be lost in an ongoing restructure after the foreign exchange trading debacle and resignation of former CEO Frank Cicutto and chairman Charles Allen. more...
Destination China
CNET AsiaBusiness process outsourcing (BPO) has become one of the key strategies for not only large multinational organizations, but also small and medium-size businesses. This is understandable as many organizations today look for a dynamic strategy to reduce their costs and increase returns on investments. BPO provides SMBs with another tool to improve competitiveness through focusing on core business activities and offering better and more responsive customer service. Smaller companies often do not have the scale to set up their own operations offshore in order to benefit from the low cost advantages available, so they leverage the consolidated scale of an outsourcing provider. Although BPO can take different forms, offshore outsourcing is an escalating trend among Asia-Pacific SMBs, and China, one destination for BPO, is catching on fast. In the outsourcing field, China is the biggest challenge in the future and the largest threat to India. With its vast population and fast-growing economy, the country has at least two strengths in the global outsourcing market: manufacturing and IT. more...
