Source: www.business-standard.com

Bracing up to counter the deleterious effects of the slowdown in the US, Cognizant Technology Solutions Corporation is further expanding its presence in India. The company, which is targeting 10-15 per cent of its revenue share from outside the US and European markets in the next two to three years, will invest approximately $46 million (Rs 201 crore) to further expand its infrastructure in Kolkata.

A company source told Business Standard the company would add about 500,000 square feet of office space in the first phase of its new fully-owned techno-complex presently coming up on 20 acres of land in Bantala, a Special Economic Zone designated area. “Once completed, this new facility will be able to accommodate approximately 4,000 new employees,” the company said. Cognizant currently employs around 5,000 personnel out of Kolkata in six development centres — one fully-owned and the rest leased facilities.

The company is following in the footsteps of compatriots like Tata Consultancy Services and Infosys Technologies by diversifying and expanding rapidly into emerging markets like China and India where it has made sizeable investments. It is also looking at expanding its presence in the Middle East and Latin American markets.

A good number of companies who outsource financial and healthcare services to India have been affected by the credit crunch in the wake of the market downturn in the US. Some have scaled back significantly on their IT spends this year. Hence, Cognizant is targeting new growth areas like infrastructure services, business process outsourcing (BPO) and Knowledge Process Outsourcing (KPO) in Asia.

Cognizant, whose clients include AstraZeneca and Molina Healthcare, cut its 2008 outlook last week to $2.81 billion from $2.95 billion, despite meeting analyst expectations on bottomline. The management is also said to be expecting the company’s top five clients in the healthcare segment to cut back spending into the third quarter of 2008..

Only 1.5 per cent of Cognizant’s second quarter revenues (ending June 30, 2008) of $685.4 million came from Asian markets, with the majority from the US market and 20 per cent coming in from Europe. The company presently has over 59,000 employees on its rolls, of which almost two-third are placed offshore, providing low-cost software development services and support primarily to US and European companies.

Source: www.gamasutra.com

India development studio FXLabs says it’s moving into outsourcing services, adding a new division to support publishers and developers who want to use their development and art teams.

Hyderabad-based FXLabs will provide outsourcing services for PC and Flash games, and also offer 3D modeling, characters, props and environment models, rigging, texturing and animation.

The studio staffs over 100 artists and game programmers, and claims to be the only team in India to develop a complete game entirely within the country. FXLabs says it is experienced in using the Unreal and Torque engines, as well as other programming tools.

FXLabs’ current development slate includes Inferno, a game based on Dante’s Inferno, a game based on Dhoom 2, which it calls “the most valuable property in Bollywood,” and a game based on Archie Comics.

“The outsourcing division was created to address and support the challenges faced by today’s publishers and developers in their internal production capacity,” says FXLabs founder and chairman Sashi Reddi. “Through this new service offering, we extend our expertise to achieving our partners’ goals.”

Source: www.nbr.co.nz

by Allan Swann - Local IT services company, Fronde Systems Group, has been appointed Google’s first business enterprises partner in New Zealand.

The deal means Fronde – a software as a service sector (SAAS) provider – can now call on the resources of one of the most dynamic and powerful companies in the world.

The Wellington-based company will be Google’s first partner in New Zealand for the Google Security, Compliance and eDiscovery products as well as Google Apps.

“These products and services have not been available in New Zealand for enterprise customers before so this is a significant development for corporate organisations,” Fronde’s general manager Steve Graham said.

Cloud computing ( which allows applictions to be accessed from a brower) has long been mooted for business applications, but concerns over security, outsourcing of information and the desire to keep operations inhouse have held the evolution of the market back.

Mr Graham believes there is a sea change in the way companies think about these technologie, and that they are no longer averse to looking at the business model.

“A lot of large companies are now seriously looking at these systems not just to cut costs, but to raise efficiencies. It makes far more sense than spending billions changing and upgrading your entire software system every few years,” he says.

For example, instead of running their own email services, stored on a central server that needs to be continually maintained, upgraded and requires specialised IT knowledge, customers will now be able to take advantage of Google’s storage, serves and expertise through the web.

Google’s web-based applications offer functionality comparable to most office suites, spam filters and anti-virus programs, saving businesses licensing and compliance costs.

These services are based on a subscription model, so businesses can give the system a try and if it doesn’t work simply drop it.

“With the SaaS business model, there is nothing to install or maintain, and Fronde anticipates significant savings for corporate customers. It will be great to see Google and SaaS products being adopted in the enterprise space by New Zealand businesses alongside our other SaaS solutions,”Mr Graham says.

Source: www.financialexpress.com

The Indian auto component industry has graduated from achieving operational excellence through developing engineering capability to tap the multi-billion dollar global component outsourcing market. This could be categorised as the early stages, post Maruti-Suzuki and global market economy.

There is a huge outsourcing potential for the Indian auto components in the global markets, which is estimated to be around $25 billion. The Indian auto components also hold great opportunities to participate in the new vehicle platform development of the Indian Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEMs), said Automotive Component Manufacturers Association (Acma) of India.

This can only be realised if the component manufacturers imbibe the research and development (R&D) culture as well as acquire the in-house capability of designing and developing new generation auto components in close partnership and collaboration with OEMs and tier-1 companies, Acma said. However, in the current global scenario, the ability to design and develop new products is emerging as a key decisive factor in determining global competitiveness vis-à-vis other low cost countries, it added.

Keeping in mind the roadmap given in the Automotive Mission Plan 2006-2016 and need for auto component industry to develop R&D capacity and new product development capability, Acma will focus on a theme called ‘Becoming an R&D Powerhouse: The Next Frontier’, at its 48th annual session, to be held in New Delhi on September 3, 2008.

To further this effort and have a continuous focus on R&D, Acma has signed up with MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology), Sloan School of Management, Cambridge of the US for a programme on product design & development, specially tailored for the auto component sector.

This programme is aimed at bringing about the mindset change in CEOs to embrace the R&D culture and lead by example in spreading the R&D movement in the Indian auto component sector.

Source: infotech.indiatimes.com

MUMBAI: India’s top software exporter Tata Consultancy Services has bagged a five-year multi-million- dollar contract from Singapore Airlines Cargo.

As per the agreement, SIA Cargo has outsourced its cargo revenue accounting processes to TCS.

In 2004, the Singapore-based carrier had outsourced its back-office revenue accounting processes to the Tata group company.

“Singapore Airlines and TCS have always enjoyed a long lasting relationship which can be termed more as a partnership in progress rather than a customer-service provider relationship,” TCS Asia Pacific Executive Vice-President and Regional Director Girija Pande said in a statement.

Although the company did not reveal the deal size, industry sources said it could be over 100 million dollars as SIA Cargo, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Singapore Airlines, is ranked fourth in the world in terms of international freight tone-kilometer.

The airline has a route network that covers more than 39 countries.

TCS share prices were up 1.6 per cent at Rs 831. Analyst Gartner said India’s top outsourcing companies were likely to become the next generation of “megavendors” for IT services by 2011, competing for deals worth more than one billion dollars.

Tata Consultancy Services, Infosys Technologies and Wipro would increasingly compete with other top players such as IBM, Accenture and EDS for those large deals, Gartner said.

The top Indian outsourcing companies Infosys, Wipro and TCS called the India-three by Gartner, are more frequently being invited to bid for large deals that were earlier closed to them, said Partha Iyengar, a Gartner analyst.