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Archive for June, 2011

ChinaSoft Wins Two Software Outsourcing Services Projects from Large Financial Corporations

June 20th, 2011

ChinaSoft International Ltd. (referred to as “ChinaSoft” or the “Group”) (HKSE: 354) announced today the signing of the 2011 Outsourcing Framework Agreement with Ping An Technology (Shenzhen) Co., Ltd. (referred to as “Ping An Technology”), a subsidiary of China Ping An Insurance (Group) Co., Ltd. (referred to as “Ping An Group”). ChinaSoft adopts a brand new delivery model to provide software outsourcing services for Ping An’s insurance, banking, and securities businesses. ChinaSoft is also awarded with the 2011 Software Services Outsourcing Project Phase II from China Union Pay Co., Ltd. (referred to as “CUP”), further establishing the Group’s leading position in the financial software services outsourcing industry.

Ping An Group has made various adjustments and enhancements to its software outsourcing and vendor management mode throughout the years with the aim to improve its market competitiveness. With its in-depth understanding of Ping An Group’s comprehensive financial services businesses and years of industrial experiences, ChinaSoft was finally selected as Ping An Group’s outsourcing provider in its bid and tender for the 2011 Outsourcing Framework Agreement.

Also with its strong software outsourcing resource management and development capabilities,

ChinaSoft exclusively wins the contract of CUP 2011 Software Services Outsourcing Project Phase II, despite the fierce competition among many famous international and domestic outsourcing providers.

The close partnerships with these renowned financial institutions further secures ChinaSoft’s leading position in software development and service outsourcing within the finance and banking industry.

Over the years, with abundant industry experiences and project management experiences in software development outsourcing, ChinaSoft is awarded as the 2011 Global Outsourcing Top 100 by IAOP; becomes the only Microsoft Global Premier Vendor in China; and is also named as one of the Global Top 10 Service Providers of Microsoft (MSIT). In addition, ChinaSoft is also ranked as the first-tier service providers for those global well-known enterprises such as Accenture and HCL.

ChinaSoft’s human resources development and planning capabilities are gradually becoming its core competitive advantages when serving multi-national clients. ChinaSoft Global Recruitment Center (referred to as “GRC”) provides the Group with a comprehensive service in human resources planning, sharing, recruitment, and supply chain construction. With its scientific human resources management, GRC has hundreds of IT professionals located in major cities of China as well as other regions in Europe, America, and Japan, thus is capable to match various requirements on IT specialists and experts from the Group and its clients.

GRC and Excellence Training Center (referred to as “ETC”.) have jointly established ChinaSoft’s human resources supply chain by signing agreements with more than 380 colleges and universities to develop professional and customized training programs, in order to provide top-quality IT professionals to fully meet clients’ demand, as well as to cope with the growth in the Group’s outsourcing businesses.

Source:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/chinasoft-wins-two-software-outsourcing-services-projects-from-large-financial-corporations-124176079.html

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Basware Launches Global Invoice Processing Outsourcing Service

June 20th, 2011

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Basware InvoiceOut™ is a service that brings together three core components of what are often disparate elements in an Accounts Payable operation – access to resources that can be scaled up and down based upon business need, best practice process expertise and a flexible, on demand technology infrastructure. It provides businesses with access to highly skilled professionals that take over the labour-intensive and routine processes that impede agile financial decision making.

The service includes daily invoice related tasks such as dispute management to handle any discrepancies with the invoice as well as supplier engagement to ensure disputes are resolved quickly. Invoices are validated to ensure each invoice contains the required data needed to achieve the highest levels of automatic matching to purchase orders, and monthly process reporting is proactively undertaken to ensure continuous improvement across the invoice handling process.

It offers packaged processes for speeding up the transformation from paper to electronic. This includes immediate conversion to 100% electronic invoicing, along with sophisticated automatic invoice validation, matching, posting and workflow. Non-core activities to Accounts Payable, such as the scan & capture of paper invoices and accounts payable IT infrastructure are outsourced to enable in-house teams to focus on higher value activities.

Underpinning this service is Basware’s market-leading AP technology. InvoiceOut™ includes Basware Invoice Automation – a globally recognised solution for AP automation, along with infrastructure hosting that provides a robust, easily scalable and cost effective accounts payable IT environment. Businesses using the Basware InvoiceOut™ service also benefit from gaining access to the global Basware Open Network, enabling electronic purchase-to-pay message exchange within an open environment which connects 320,000 active buyers and suppliers.

According to the 2010 Lost in Transaction research, commissioned by Basware, invoice scanning / data entry is the most time consuming (38%) and error prone (41%) part of invoice processing. 7% of invoices contain errors and managing these exceptions in-house costs companies time and money, and can result in late payment fees and missed early payment discounts. Incoming invoices need to be validated and in some cases invoices need to be rejected, returned or cancelled. By outsourcing the invoice handling process, businesses can remove this often resource-heavy component, enabling in-house professionals to focus on higher-value cash management activities, designed to drive profitable growth of the business. By adopting Basware InvoiceOut™, businesses that struggle with resources and infrastructure to manage sophisticated invoice automation processes can expect to see a rapid solution deployment, leading to immediate time and cost savings and faster response times to invoice exceptions.

Esa Tihilä, Senior Vice President, Basware comments: “Since the global economic downturn, businesses have been under pressure to improve profitability and top line growth. With time and cost savings opportunities largely exhausted, companies need to look to streamlining their internal processes. Basware InvoiceOut™ is a logical extension of our service portfolio and has been designed for any mid-size or large business that is seeking an efficient and effective Accounts Payable function. Basware’s InvoiceOut™ service enables organisations to rationalise their processes, allowing their internal teams to focus on higher value activities.”

Source:http://gamutnews.com/20110620/29845/basware-launches-global-invoice-processing-outsourcing-service.html

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Ukrainian HI-TECH Initiative acquired six new members

June 20th, 2011

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Six Ukrainian software development companies joined Ukrainian Hi-Tech Initiative, a leading Ukrainian alliance in Offshore Software Development and IT industry.

Consumer Health Technologies (www.consumerhealthtech.com) – is a US-based software company, a leader in innovative software solutions for the US healthcare, insurance and banking market sector with its product BenefitSpan™. CHT converges healthcare and financial services into one comprehensive web-based platform to help clients maximize revenue opportunities by automating administrative tasks. Our clients include over 130 organizations in 50 US states, making CHT one of the largest providers of healthcare solutions in the USA. CHT established its software development operation in Ukraine in 2006.
Archer Software (archer-soft.com) – is one of the leading software companies in Ukraine, located in “east capital” – Dnipropetrovsk. During the years cooperated with many customers around the globe and successfully completed dozens of projects in wide range of areas. Company considers professionalism as a “calling card” as they provide proven practical development methodology together with high-quality project management. Delivering first class solutions to clients through the local pool of trained and experienced professionals is Archer Software’s mission.

Lizard Soft (lizard-soft.com) – custom software development company based in Kiev specialized on intranet/extranet portal and collaboration tool development (Microsoft SharePoint, IBM WebSphere Portal, OpenSource), iPhone/Android applications and business process automation (Microsoft SharePoint, IBM WebSphere Application Server, Message Broker, etc.). The company uses widely recognized methodologies (RUP, SCRUM) and pays great attention to quality management system (ISO 9001). Several
Top European banks are among their customers and the company is very proud of that.

Softjourn (www.softjourn.com) – is a ten year old company headquartered in Fremont, California and making its Ukrainian home in Ivano-Frankivsk. Companies love to work with Softjourn because they build businesses as well as new products and services. Solutions wrapped around software development include: product definition, architecture, prototyping, usability design, and QA engineering. Softjourn’s objective is to assist companies in achieving optimal value through their sourcing strategy.

Unicorn Systems UA (www.unicornsystems.eu) – is a renowned European company providing the largest information systems and solutions in the area of information and communication technologies. Company has been operating on the market since 1990 and created a series of high-end large-scale solutions that are extended and used among the most important companies in a variety of sectors – banking, insurance, telecommunications, energy, industry, commerce and public sectors.

MIT Outsource (mit-outsource.com) – is Ukrainian IT outsourcing company based in Nikolaev, Ukraine, focused on providing highly scalable business solutions to the services & manufacturing industries with innovative approaches and advanced methodologies. Company provides strategic development for the global business community with wide array of IT solutions and services customized for a range of crucial business requirements.

Victor Maznyuk, President of Ukrainian Hi-Tech Initiative noted, “We are very pleased and excited to welcome such significant number of companies that joined our association during last two months. Ukraine’s IT outsourcing services industry is rapidly developing and is estimated to have grown by 20% in 2010.

Therefore one of the main objectives of Ukrainian Hi-Tech Initiative is to promote Ukrainian market of IT outsourcing services provision on the global markets and to position Ukraine as a competitive alternative to other global IT outsourcing destinations.

At the moment Hi-Tech Initiative is the leading association in Ukrainian software development and IT outsourcing industry uniting 70 companies that employ about 8000 highly qualified IT specialists.”
About Ukrainian Hi-Tech Initiative

Ukrainian Hi-Tech Initiative (http://hi-tech.org.ua) – is a leading alliance in offshore software development and IT outsourcing industry in Ukraine. The main objective of the association is to promote Ukrainian software development companies in foreign markets.

Hi-Tech Initiative provides Ukrainian software developers with the opportunity to enhance their business in the areas of IT outsourcing and offshore programming by using the partner network and marketing channels of the Initiative in the external markets.

Ukrainian Hi-Tech Initiative provides the services in establishing partnerships, collaborating in IT projects implementation, assisting in BPO between the Ukrainian and Western companies.

In 2008 Ukrainian Hi-Tech Initiative became one of the founders of Central and Eastern European
Outsourcing Association

Source:http://www.onlineprnews.com/news/148316-1308141664-ukrainian-hitech-initiative-acquired-six-new-members.html

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China’s outsourcing sector faces challenges to catch up with India

June 20th, 2011

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As China is transforming its economy from being based on low wages to value-added products, many Chinese cities are considering whether to make the software sector their leading economic driving force, business leaders told Xinhua.

Inspired by what was achieved in Dalian, a city reliant on heavy industry before the turn of the century but now accounts for more than a 10th of China’s total software and outsourcing sector output, many cities are attempting to reduplicate its success story.

This would leave China’s software sector fragmented and give rise to overcapacity, said Michael Ye, vice president of Dalian Software Park (DLSP), home to more than 500 Chinese and foreign companies, including IBM, HP and Cisco, and about 70 percent of Dalian’s total software and outsourcing sector output.

More than 20 cities in China are aiming to copy the success model of Dalian, which really poses risks, as not all of them are well equipped to become IT hubs, Ye told Xinhua in an interview.

This is in sharp contrast with India, by far the largest outsourcing service provider which accounts for more than 40 percent of the world’s total sector. India has only four cities that are strongly focused on software development and outsourcing.

Just in China’s coastal Jiangsu Province, there are five or six cities struggling to become centers for software development and outsourcing, Ye said.

The central government should make an overall plan which selects those cities with the most and the highest quality universities, Ye said.

He suggested the establishment of one software and outsourcing hub in each of the country’s five main regions, namely southwest, north, south, central, and northeast China.

Source:http://english.peopledaily.com.cn/90001/90778/90860/7414164.html

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Steady growth for BPO industry seen in the medium term

June 20th, 2011

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The business process outsourcing industry is expected to grow steadily over the next three to five years, as local schools and universities continue to churn out graduates skilled enough to support the demands of the sector.

According to Tim Hinds, vice president for human capital at TeleTech Holdings Inc., the industry has now gone back to its growth path, following a slight slowdown that started two years ago when the global economy was stricken by a recession.

“Everybody tapered down when the economy shifted two years ago, but now we’ve seen the growth kick back in. Even during the recession, there weren’t many closures, and not many people in the industry lost their jobs. Now we’re back to where we were before the crisis hit,” Hinds said. “Looking at the current labor pool, there’s more than enough to support the growth of the industry. Growth can be sustained over the next three to five years.”

Based on the Business Processing Association of the Philippines’ Road Map 2011-2016, the BPO sector has the potential to post at least $20 billion in revenue by 2016, and may even hit $25 billion with stronger public-private partnership.

A $20-billion industry can provide employment to as many as 900,000 individuals. A $25-billion industry, on the other hand, may generate jobs for as many as 1.3 million people.

But to ensure that there will always be a steady stream of qualified labor, Hinds said would-be BPO practitioners should also exert time and effort to improve themselves.

Near-hires, or applicants who almost made it through the screening process but just fell short on some requirements, should be willing to spend some time on sharpening their skills a bit more, he said.

“We’ve done some near-hire training over the years and we’ve gotten mixed results. Our strategy is to identify a core group of baseline competencies. If people are willing to invest time, we’ll invest in infrastructure so they can build their competencies to meet our expectations,” Hinds said.

Source:http://business.inquirer.net/4761/steady-growth-for-bpo-industry-seen-in-the-medium-term

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Hacker attacks show vulnerability of cloud computing

June 17th, 2011

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As hackers continue their rampage against the world’s largest banks, defense contractors and technology companies, executives and government officials are confronting a sobering truth: The bad guys are winning.

The seemingly unending string of high-profile attacks, most recently against Citigroup Inc. and Sony Corp., have shown that nearly every organization is vulnerable to a growing contingent of well-trained and agile attackers who are finding security holes faster than they can be plugged.

“It’s gotten very dangerous out there,” said Stan Stahl, a security consultant and president of the Los

Angeles chapter of the Information Systems Security Assn. “There’s an epidemic of this stuff going on right now.”

The increase in high-profile attacks comes as companies are looking to move more of their business operations online, including to the “cloud,” in which computing tasks are outsourced to firms that maintain huge data centers around the world.

Despite the cloud’s potential for cost savings and reducing the hassles of running in-house computer servers, security analysts say it may not yet be as safe as advertised — a warning that many companies are taking seriously.

Alex Bermudez, the security manager for Beachbody, a Los Angeles company that makes the popular P90X workout videos, said that although his company is beefing up security as it expands overseas, he’s held off on shifting operations into the cloud.

“There are a lot of good technology companies doing the cloud well,” he said, but having his company’s data stored remotely, alongside data from many other firms, “is a little scary.”

Concerns about the cloud dominated conversation at a UCLA conference this week on cyber security, which drew nearly 400 executives, double last year’s attendance.

Eugene Schultz, chief technology officer at Emagined Security, said that hackers are spending substantial time and effort looking for ways to penetrate the cloud.

“There are some real Achilles’ heels in the cloud infrastructure that are making big holes for the bad guys to get into,” he said.

Because data from hundreds or thousands of companies can be stored on large cloud servers, he said, hackers can theoretically gain control of huge stores of information through a single attack — a process he called “hyperjacking.”

Security professionals said the many attacks recently in the news reflect both an uptick in hacking activity and new pressure on companies to quickly disclose when they’ve been attacked.

When hackers broke into Sony’s PlayStation network in April to steal information from about 77 million user accounts, the company came under fire from federal lawmakers for waiting days to inform customers that their personal data had been compromised.

Sony’s handling of the breach triggered hearings in Washington and has spurred the Federal Trade Commission to recommend new laws that would compel companies to quickly disclose breaches to users or face penalties.

“Now people are like, ‘If we don’t get it out now, someone’s going to do a congressional inquiry and we’ll be called up and asked about it,’ ” said Jeff Carter, a security technologist formerly at Bank of America and now at Hoyos Group, which makes iris scanning security technology.

And as the attacks yield increasingly lucrative financial and personal data, the crowd of outlaws is growing too, many from developing nations where unemployment rates are high and programming jobs in short supply.

In much the same way that YouTube and cellphones have enabled millions to become filmmakers, and free blogging software has created legions of diarists, low-cost hacking tools have automated the hacking process for novices.

“A lot more people understand how to do this now,” said Samy Kamkar, a security researcher and former hacker who once created a malicious computer program that crashed MySpace. “It’s much easier for any kid with a computer to download software, point it at a company’s website and attempt to run various attacks.”

A hacker group called LulzSec has taken credit for recent attacks on the websites of the U.S. Senate, CIA, and several video game companies.

The group uses Twitter to publicize its exploits and has earned hundreds of thousands of followers.

In Internet lingo, the word “lulz” means laughs had at the expense of others – and is the group’s self-proclaimed raison d’être.

“Vigilantes? Nope. Cyber terrorists? Nope,” the group tweeted recently. “We have no political motives — we do it for the lulz.”

Source:http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-cloud-security-20110617,0,5779844.story

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Is the honeymoon over for India’s IT services companies?

June 17th, 2011

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Demand for outcome-based IT services contracts will reduce India’s traditional advantage as businesses begin to pay service providers based on improving business, rather than for time and materials. Could this spell the end of the decade-long honeymoon for India’s IT outsourcing sector?
Indian suppliers got their foot in the door of the global IT market just before 2000, when global businesses, worried about the Millennium Bug, needed lots of software resources to prepare for the worst (see panel below).
As a result, Indian technology companies which had been around for years developed relationships with global enterprises. The big attraction to big business was the availability of good software engineering skills at a fraction of the cost of home-grown equivalents.

Changing times
India’s IT sector remains confident but recognises it needs to change. Som Mittal, president of Nasscom, the body that represents Indian IT suppliers, recently told the Financial Times that he expects the Indian services sector to grow 15%, to be worth $70bn this year, despite the challenges it faces.

But despite this confidence, a confluence of factors could mean the Indian suppliers will face reducing profit margins. These factors include a trend towards businesses paying for services based on outcomes rather than time and materials used, wage inflation in India and a tightening up on the rules regarding work visas in the UK and US.
Mittal accepted that outcome-based agreements changed the game and will force Indian suppliers to become more efficient.
Mark Lewis, head of outsourcing at law firm Berwin Leighton Paisner, says the honeymoon is over for Indian global IT and outsourcing players. “They now have to face the same challenges as their other global competitors. Join the club, as it were.”
He says there is now a cost base issue for the Indian suppliers: “As the Indian economy has grown and continued to grow, so has GDP inflation and wage inflation, especially in the software engineering sector. So people who used to be cheaper than infrastructure are now much more expensive than they were.”

Douglas Hayward, analyst at IDC, believes the Indian IT industry has accepted things are changing and is adapting to it: “Indian suppliers realise now they are moving to the end of the golden-age of time and materials and throwing people at a problem.”
“They have already moved into fixed-cost deals from time and materials and outcome-based contracts are the next step.”

Room to develop
Ilan Oshri, associate fellow at Warwick Business School, believes India still has much room for manoeuvre: “There are rising costs but people are shifting to different cities where costs are lower. They are not just using cities like Mumbai and Chennai, but also southern India.” He says his research actually shows an increasing trend for Western businesses to set up captive centres in India.
Ilan Oshri says outcome-based contracts are becoming more popular but still only account for a small portion of total contracts. “Outcome-based contracts are the smallest portion of contracts, so it does not have a real impact at the moment.” He agrees with Hayward that outcome-based deals are not a major step from fixed-cost agreements.
Indian companies are noting a change in buying habits. Bindi Bhullar, director at Indian supplier HCL Technologies, says in the UK there is a trend towards outcome-based contracts. He says customers are becoming more sophisticated in their purchasing of IT services: “Even first-time outsourcers can use outcome-based contracts if they have the right advisory support.”
But he adds that there is still a future for the time and materials model. “It still suits a lot of customers and when you look at the overall market there is still relatively low penetration.”
Indian IT service providers face a challenge to retain their strong position in the global outsourcing sector. The last decade has seen Indian companies outgrow their competitors but have they prepared for shifts in customer buying habits, geopolitics and economic change?

Source:http://www.computerweekly.com/Articles/2011/06/16/247001/Is-the-honeymoon-over-for-Indias-IT-services-companies.htm

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