Combined IT infrastructure services include application hosting, service desk, storage, networking and managed security

Dell Services and Atos have entered into a partnership to deliver a new IT outsourcing services offering that will provide a standardised cloud-based IT infrastructure and global support offering for information services and publishing company Wolters Kluwer customers in the legal, tax, finance and healthcare industries.

Together, Dell Services and Atos will provide a catalogue of standardised, tiered service offerings that enable Wolters Kluwer to support the processing demands and volume fluctuations across its diverse, global customer segments.

The combined offering creates an agile enterprise that can leverage its technology capacity to support the ups and downs during and between industry peak times and will also allow Wolters Kluwer to support that same scalability need with their customers.

Dell Services and Atos will deliver a variety of IT infrastructure services to Wolters Kluwer’s North American and European operations, including application hosting, service desk, storage, networking and managed security.

Dell Services Infrastructure and Cloud Computing vice-president and managing director Kevin Jones said Dell and Wolters Kluwer are passionate about delivering a superior customer experience and unmatched service.

“We look forward to building on our partnership, enabling Wolters Kluwer to quickly bring new services to market, manage their current services more efficiently and drive a consistent IT experience around the world – all through our cloud-based infrastructure,” said Jones.

Source:http://itservices.cbronline.com/news/dell-atos-join-forces-to-deliver-it-infrastructure-services-to-wolters-kluwer-030212

Dell Services and Atos today announced a significant offering of IT outsourcing services that will provide a standardized cloud-based IT infrastructure and global support solution for Wolters Kluwer customers in the legal, tax, finance and healthcare industries. The acceleration and adoption of workflow solutions, mobile applications and increased expectation of content available at the point of need requires access to cloud-based, high-availability solutions.

Today, up to 70 percent of Wolters Kluwer’s portfolio is online, software and services, so the ability to provide a responsive, secure and high performance infrastructure is a critical customer service requirement. Dell Services and Atos will provide a catalog of standardized, tiered service offerings that enables Wolters Kluwer to support the varying processing demands and volume fluctuations across its diverse, global customer segments. This is important in creating a more agile enterprise that can flex its technology capacity to support the ebb and flow during and between industry peak times. More importantly, this will allow Wolters Kluwer to support that same scalability need with their customers.

Dell Services and Atos will deliver a variety of IT infrastructure services to Wolters Kluwer’s North American and European operations, including:

– Application Hosting

– Service desk

– Storage

– Networking

– Managed Security

Quotes:

“Traditional methods for provisioning IT infrastructure and services no longer support the pace of innovation in professional markets for online, software and service solutions, and an increasingly mobile customer base. With applications and services being brought to market at an accelerating pace, a more dynamic delivery method based on an agile cloud service and variable cost structure is more suitable. This decision and partnership brings together Wolters Kluwer, Dell and Atos, who share a common passion about great customer service, industry innovation and market leadership.”

– Tom Lesica, CEO of Global Shared Services, Wolters Kluwer

“We are continually looking for ways to deliver better, more robust online information and software solutions to our customers via the cloud. By standardizing and outsourcing our IT infrastructure, we can create a global cloud platform for online services that is inherently flexible and meets our clients’ requirements for performance, security and high availability. At the same time we reduce our costs of operating and maintaining different infrastructures around the world.”

– Peter Cook, CIO of Global Shared Services, Wolters Kluwer

“Dell and Wolters Kluwer are passionate about delivering a superior customer experience and unmatched service. Secure, reliable and responsive services are an essential part of the equation. We look forward to building on our partnership, enabling Wolters Kluwer to quickly bring new services to market, manage their current services more efficiently and drive a consistent IT experience around the world — all through our cloud-based infrastructure.”

– Kevin Jones, vice president and managing director Infrastructure and Cloud Computing, Dell Services

“Wolters Kluwer and Atos have a long history of close cooperation in Europe. We are delivering a reliable infrastructure supporting the expanding online and SaaS-based services Wolters Kluwer delivers to its European customers. This deal creates the basis for future growth and expansion of Wolters Kluwer and Atos and highlights our strength in cloud services as well as the growing media and publishing sector.”

– Bruno Fabre, executive vice president,Telecom and Media, Atos

Source:http://www.marketwatch.com/story/dell-and-atos-to-deliver-standardized-cloud-based-it-infrastructure-services-for-wolters-kluwer-2012-02-02

Dell is on the prowl for an India acquisition worth up to $1 billion (Rs 5,000 crore), part of a strategy to bolster its information technology services business and compete better against the likes of IBM and Accenture.

The world’s third-largest computer maker wants to buy a mid-sized Indian tech firm with “several thousands of staff” and revenues of $500 million to $1 billion or even more, Suresh Vaswani, chairman of the company’s Indian operations and executive vicepresident of the Dell’s global application and BPO business, told ET.

He declined to say which companies Dell, which has cash of about $16 billion, is interested in, but bankers identified Hexaware Technologies and NIIT Technologies, each with revenues of around $300 million, as potential targets. Both companies have been denying plans to sell. Vaswani, a Wipro veteran who joined Dell last year to help the company grow its services business, said mid-sized firms with a majority of staff in India and with expertise in areas such as banking or healthcare will make good targets.

“The services acquisition can be Perot Systems-like but with more India leverage and in the tier-II space. They may be $700 million or $800 million (by revenue) in one vertical and may even be ahead of tier-I companies in that space. We don’t have to look at one; we could look at two,” he said.

Dell acquired Perot Systems for $3.9 billion in 2009, marking its entry into the services space. The acquisitions also gave it significant offshore delivery capabilities and strength in the healthcare services business.

Experts familiar with Dell’s strategy said the company plans to leverage acquisitions to more than double, or even treble, its current IT services revenues of $8 billion in 3-4 years. Dell has said it wants to increase revenues from IT services to $11 billion in three years, but this does not account for business from any potential acquisitions. IT services contribute less than 15% to Dell’s total income.

From around 28,000 staff in India, Dell plans to ramp up to a level where it can compete more effectively against IBM, which has over 1,00,000 employees in the country. This can only be achieved through an acquisition; competing with traditional campus recruiters such as TCS, Infosys and Wipro to hire hundreds of software engineers will be difficult.

Once the world’s largest PC maker, Dell has lost more than a quarter of its share in the commoditised computer market to aggressive Asian rivals such as Lenovo. Now, the company wants a bigger share of the high-margin IT services pie to improve profitability by bundling computer hardware with outsourcing contracts.

IBM had a head start in IT services when in 2005 it sold its PC business to Lenovo to focus on the rapidly-growing areas of software and services. IBM now gets over half of its $100 billion revenues from services.

“These companies are looking at a trillion-dollar market which is only growing. Dell has been an acquisitive company especially in the services space. A mid-sized acquisition will definitely add value for them and help them respond to clients faster,” said Viral Thakker, a partner at KPMG.

Source:http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/tech/hardware/dell-readies-rs-5000-crore-war-chest-for-india-buyout-to-boost-it-business/articleshow/11691859.cms

The data centre uses a environment-friendly cooling system to provide a low power usage effectiveness (PUE)

Dell has opened a new data centre in Slough which will enable IT outsourcing and improve end-to-end service capabilities across Europe, the Middle East and Africa.

Dell announced the opening of Slough data centre in April 2011 and it is part of the two-year, $1bn global data centre expansion programme to provide leading solutions, services and cloud-based delivery options.

The Texas-based information technology firm said with this expansion it will extend Dell’s delivery capacity and bring cost-effective, high-value services while improving the company’s ability to provide cloud and IT outsourcing services.

In addition, the expansion helps Dell to support and comply with the country-specific data protection, privacy and governance laws, and jurisdiction issues that apply to regulated and other industry sectors, said the company.

Dell said it provides the comprehensive IT outsourcing services from the Slough facility, including information assurance, security and storage services, as well as platform services.

The data centre enables high density cooling for high energy use hardware and traditional ITO hardware installations. To enable energy efficient operations and to provide a low power usage effectiveness (PUE) the data centre uses a high efficiency, environment-friendly cooling system, said Dell.

Dell plans to offer cloud-based Unified Clinical Archiving services in the UK in early 2012 which allows healthcare providers to store, manage and share medical imaging data through cloud-based medical archive platform.

To maximise the value of customer’s IT investments and create efficient, effective and scalable IT environments Dell IT outsourcing services utilises skilled service professionals, industry best practices, automated tools and proven methodologies, said the company.

Dell said a standardised service management methodology is employed by the Dell IT outsourcing services to deliver high levels of reliability and predictability across the enterprise.

Dell Services Infrastructure and Cloud Computing vice-president Don Mann said the company is excited to announce the expansion of Dell’s global footprint with the opening of a next generation data centre in the United Kingdom that will provide regionally delivered IT outsourcing services and cloud offerings.

“This is the first data centre to open as part of the company’s $1bn solutions announcement this past April and reinforces our commitment to deliver industry-leading services and solutions that help our customers innovate and drive business results.

Source:http://outsourcingbpo.cbronline.com/news/dell-opens-a-new-data-centre-in-slough-uk-131011

Dell has completed a modular data center build in Slough, UK (outside of London), that will support a wide variety of IT services, including a plethora of upcoming services the company expects to roll out in 2012.

On the slate for next year are “Virtual Desktop-as-a-Service” and Dell Cloud offerings. The Cloud service will be built on VMware, using VMware vCloud.

Another upcoming service is Unified Clinical Archiving, a Cloud-based medical imaging storage, management and sharing service for healthcare providers. Dell already offers this service in the US, currently managing more than 4bn diagnostic imaging objects for US-based customers.

In addition to new offerings, the Slough data center will support Dell’s traditional IT outsourcing services.

Don Mann, VP of infrastructure and Cloud computing at Dell, said the data center will provide “regionally delivered” outsourcing and Cloud services.

“This is the first data center to open as part of the company’s $1bn solutions announcement this past April and reinforces our commitment to deliver industry-leading services and solutions that help our customers innovate and drive business results,” he said.

In April, Dell announced a plan to build 10 data centers around the world to support a range of Cloud-based services, including Azure, VMware and OpenStack clouds. The services will include Infrastructure-as-a-Service, Platform-as-a-Service, Virtual Desktop-as-a-Service and IT outsourcing, Steve Schuckenbrock, president of Dell Services, said then.

The company started with public cloud. In August, at VMware’s VMworld conference in San Francisco, Dell launched its public IaaS offering, which includes virtual CPUs, memory, storage networks, IP addresses, firewalls and catalog capabilities.

Source:http://www.datacenterdynamics.com/focus/archive/2011/10/dells-new-uk-data-center-to-support-slew-of-upcoming-services

Technavio’s analysts forecast the Data Center Outsourcing market in North America to grow at a CAGR of 12 percent over the period 2010-2014. One of the key factors contributing to this market growth is the increasing need to reduce data center capital and operational costs. The Data Center Outsourcing market in North America has also been witnessing increasing adoption of private cloud-based data center outsourcing. However, the growing number of end-users’ concerns for data center security could pose a challenge to the growth of this market.

Key vendors dominating this market include HP, IBM, CSC, and Dell.

Technavio’s North America Data Center Outsourcing Market 2010 -2014 report has been prepared based on an in-depth analysis of the market with inputs from industry experts. The report focuses specifically on North America and the current Data Center Outsourcing market landscape and its growth prospects. The report also includes a discussion on the key vendors operating in this market.

Source:http://www.marketwatch.com/story/north-american-data-center-outsourcing-market-2010-2014-2011-09-15

He’s hardly 15 weeks into his new job as executive vice-president of the applications and business process outsourcing (BPO) division of Dell Services in India, but Suresh Vaswani exudes confidence when talking about his new assignment.

Vaswani – also chairman of Dell India – has to build next-generation service offerings while simultaneously growing Dell’s process capabilities across multiple industry verticals and market segments.

“It’s early days but you can already sense that the services thrust has become very important to Dell,” he asserts.

It’s a tall order. Dell, which, according to industry estimates, has a revenue of nearly $2 billion in India, has been historically perceived as a technology company.

Source:http://www.rediff.com/business/slide-show/slide-show-1-tech-everything-about-dells-big-plans-for-india/20110905.htm

Offers a multi-tenant environment for running virtual systems

Dell and VMware have jointly released the Dell Cloud based on VMware vCloud Datacenter Services to provide customers with a complete multi-layer enterprise security offering.

Dell said the new offering will run in its datacenters and offer a multi-tenant environment for running virtual systems.

Dell is one of the first providers authorised to provide VMware vCloud Datacenter Services for enterprise-class, secure, public, private and hybrid clouds.

Dell claimed that the latest release is the first public and hybrid cloud offering by the company.

Dell will also offer consulting, application and infrastructure services to help companies transform their IT environment and integrate cloud services in their business.

With the cloud offering, Dell aims to address one of the greatest concerns customers have with cloud implementations.

Dell and VMware will also provide Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) choice for customer organisations, hosting and outsourcing firms, system integrators and service providers.

This provides automation, multi-level security and availability in order to manage on-demand capacity, workload scalability, or as a platform to respond to changing business needs more rapidly.

Through the acquisition of SecureWorks and partnerships with VMware and Trend Micro, Dell aims to secure critical IT assets for the customer through the multi-layer provisioning of services.

Dell protects the datacentre’s infrastructure through the management and monitoring of network firewalls, web application firewalls, intrusion detection and prevention systems, and vulnerability scanning.

Dell Cloud with VMware vCloud Datacenter Services includes offers a public option for customers, as an enterprise-class, secure offer of Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IAAS) hosted in a secure Dell datacentre.

Dell will build private clouds at either our customer’s datacentre or Dell datacentres leveraging VMware offerings including VMware vSphere and VMware vCloud Director as well as Dell’s vStart offering.

Utilising VMware vCloud Connector, the hybrid cloud offering provides management of on- or off-premise private cloud and Dell’s Public cloud offering.

Dell is currently offering the Dell Cloud with VMware vCloud Datacenter Service with beta customers, and the offering will be available in the US in the fourth quarter of this year with rollout planned for EMEA and APJ in 2012.

Source:http://appdev.cbronline.com/news/dell-vmware-bring-first-public-and-hybrid-cloud-offering-310811

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) has selected Dell’s wholly-owned subsidiary, Perot Systems Government Services (PSGS), a unit of Dell Services, to provide a full scope of Information Technology Outsourcing (ITO) support services as well as hardware, enterprise, and software products. The program will aid the commission in planning, directing, and overseeing the delivery of centralized and efficient information technology infrastructure and information management services. Under the 6-year, $252 million contract, Dell Services will operate, maintain and enhance a comprehensive, agency-wide IT infrastructure for the NRC’s Office of Information Systems.

The core areas that Dell Services will provide support include: program management, Blackberry Support Services, Email and Messaging, File and Print, Personal Computing, Software License Management, Network Management, Remote Access, Integration and High Performance Computing. Additional services within the contract include: Computer Facilities Management, Data Center Systems Administration, management of the Nuclear Security Incident Response Operations Center, Wireless Communication, Information Assurance and Security, Technology Assessment and management of the Emergency Response Data System.

Source:http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20110610005858/en/Dell-Services-Selected-Nuclear-Regulatory-Commission-Provide

Technology giant Dell reported that its quarterly profit grew almost three-fold to US$945m from US$341m last year. Revenues were up 1pc to €15bn as strategic acquisitions in the area of cloud, services and security began to deliver.

“We’re off to a solid start in our fiscal year 2012,” chairman and CEO Michael Dell exclaimed.

“Our substantial profit increase demonstrates that our strategy is working and our execution is improving.”

Revenue for Dell’s commercial business improved 3pc to $12 billion, with record profitability. Commercial services revenue increased 6pc.

Enterprise solutions and services revenue grew 5pc to $4.4 billion in the quarter and represents 30pc of Dell’s consolidated revenue.

Servers and networking revenue increased 11pc.

Dell-owned storage technology, which includes Compellent, EqualLogic, PowerVault and DX Object Storage, grew 11pc in the quarter, offset by declines in EMC storage. The company’s overall storage business revenue declined 13pc. Dell closed the acquisition of Compellant during the quarter, has already developed a strong pipeline of business and is on track with integration plans for the period.

Dell Services revenue grew 5pc to $2 billion. Transactional support and outsourcing revenue were up 5pc and 3pc, respectively, while the project services business grew 13pc. Dell also added enterprise-class security capability in Q1 with the closing of its acquisition of SecureWorks.

The company expanded its global financing capability during the quarter with the announcement of its intent to acquire from CIT Dell Financial Services(DFS) Canada Ltd., as well as CIT Vendor Finance ’s Dell-related assets and sales and servicing functions in Europe.

Dell’s business units
Large Enterprise had record operating income of $504 million, or 11.3pc of revenue on $4.5 billion of revenue, up 5pc from a year ago. Enterprise solutions and services revenue was $1.8 billion, a 2pc increase. Revenue from desktop and laptop computers grew 7pc as the client refresh among large corporate accounts continued.

Public revenue was $3.8 billion, a 2pc decline resulting from weaker spending on desktop and laptop products. Enterprise solutions and services revenue was up 3pc Server revenues increased 9pc. Operating income for the quarter was $370 million, or 9.8pc of revenue.

Small and Medium Business had record profit in the quarter with revenue up 7pc to $3.8 billion, a two-year high driven by strong demand across all products and services. Operating income was $463 million, or 12.3pc of revenue. Enterprise solutions and services revenue was up 16pc, driven by a gain in servers of 19pc; services of 16pc, and storage of 7pc.

Consumer business struggles
Consumer revenue was $3 billion, down 7pc, as demand was softer than expected. However, profit significantly improved with operating income of $136 million, or 4.5pc of revenue, benefiting from a simplified brand structure that now includes an improved line of Inspiron, re-launched XPS, and Alienware products, a shift to higher value products, and structural and component cost improvements in the supply chain.

Revenue from growth markets (which excludes the U.S., Canada, Western Europe and Japan) grew 17pc and represents 27pc of total company revenue. Revenue from BRIC countries grew 18pc, with India up 28pc and China up 22pc.

Source:http://www.siliconrepublic.com/business/item/21837-dell-triples-quarterly/

In an effort to increase investments in new technology solutions that will help foster customer innovation and drive business results, Dell (News – Alert) recently announced its plans to invest $ 1 billion in the current fiscal year to deliver leading solutions, services and cloud-based delivery options.
“Technology advances, delivery methods and the move to disruptive IT models like cloud are changing the fundamental way businesses operate,” said Steve Schuckenbrock, president of Dell Services, in a statement. “With this transformational shift, businesses are gaining benefits in terms of speed to market and organizational and compute flexibility.”

Schuckenbrock said that Dell is mobilizing to help customers capture these benefits and make the power of cloud computing accessible to more organizations and users. Dell has made and will continue to make significant investments to deliver technology that helps customers thrive in the Virtual Era, according to Dell officials.

Over the next 24 months, the company will build multiple highly efficient cloud data centers around the world to provide its customers access to public and private cloud technologies and its world-class IT outsourcing capabilities.

These new data centers will allow customers to take advantage of infrastructure- and virtual desktop-as-a-Service offerings as well as IT outsourcing.
Company officials pointed out that Dell will open 12 Global Solution Centers this year and is planning 10 more over the next 18 months, to better bring open, capable and affordable solutions to organizations around the world.

This global network of solution centers will provide a backdrop for customers to learn about Dell’s industry-focused solutions and domain expertise.
Dell also launched new Next Generation Data center, End-User Computing and Email Archiving solutions that enable efficiency and innovation from the core to the edge.

In other cloud computing news, NaviSite (News – Alert) achieved the Cisco Advanced Managed Services Certification, which recognizes the company’s initial investment in the ITIL processes, practices and tools necessary to provide high-quality managed services.

“This achievement represents an important milestone in the development and roll out of our cloud-based services,” said R. Brooks Borcherding, president and CEO of NaviSite earlier this month.

Source:http://it.tmcnet.com/channels/cloud-computing/articles/167672-dell-invest-1-billion-cloud-computing-solutions.htm

Vaswani at Dell Serivces will report to Steve Schuckenbrock, the president of Dell Services.

Vaswani’s focus will be to build next generation service offerings and grow Dell’s process capabilities on a global basis across multiple industry verticals, service offerings and market segments, personal computer major Dell said in a statement.

“Dell has a great presence in India and I look to enhancing its tremendous global delivery model to make Dell a leading technology solutions provider in India and reinforce its position as an employer of choice,” Vaswani said.

The Dell Services Applications and Business Process Outsourcing organisation includes more than 15,000 team members globally. This division was created after Dell acquired Perot Systems for $3.9 billion in 2009. Over the last two years, Dell Services’ revenues have grown to $7.7 billion and India is an important market for the entity.

In his role as chairman of Dell India, Vaswani will carry the responsibility of enhancing Dell’s global delivery capabilities and expanding the company’s presence in the Indian IT market.

In January this year, Vaswani along with his colleague Girish Paranjpe had to left country’s third largest IT company Wipro as Joint CEO. The decision was taken after Wipro opted for restructuring of management system from joint CEO structure to single CEO structure.

Source:http://www.siliconindia.com/shownews/Ex_Wipro_CEO_Suresh_Vaswani_appointed_Dell_India_Chairman-nid-81713.html

Dell Inc. has clinched a six-year information technology outsourcing deal with TUI Travel plc, a company under TUI AG, a renowned European travel group. Financial details of the deal were not divulged.

Per the terms of the deal, Dell will provide hardware and software asset management, as well as help desk, printer management, patch management, deployment, software compliance, and other services in the UK, Germany, France, Spain, the Netherlands and Switzerland.

Apart from the above services, Dell will develop a single point of communication to resolve all technical issues and set up a 24×7 help desk service for customer queries. TUI Travel will leverage Dell’s services to reduce cost of managing infrastructure as well as maximize employee productivity.

A few days back, Dell signed a seven-year deal with the Brooklyn Hospital Center , under which the PC maker will provide its revenue cycle services. These services will facilitate TBHC in billing and payer reimbursement, thereby delivering maximum patient satisfaction.

We believe Dell’s services are in demand and will be a revenue driver in the coming quarters. During the recently concluded fourth quarter of 2011, Dell recorded a 1% year-over-year growth in its Service business. However, the company strengthened its services portfolio with the three acquisitions, namely information-security services provider SecureWorks Inc., cloud-based service provider Boomi and cloud-based medical archiving solutions provider Insite One Inc.

Apart from Dell’s deal wins and acquisitions, we remain encouraged by its decent fourth quarter numbers, with earnings per share and revenues showing annual improvements. New products, a stronger services business, opportunities in the Electronic Medical Record sector, along with the introduction of Dell Streak were the achievements of the year. Dell’s international exposure, particularly expansion in China, is also encouraging.

However, a high debt level and increasing competition from Hewlett-Packard Company and Acer keep us concerned.

Source:http://www.zacks.com/stock/news/48282/Dell’s+Services+in+Demand

To deploy managed infrastructure services and utilise IT Infrastructure Library (ITIL) systems and cloud-based asset management capabilities for TUI Travel

Dell Services has signed a six-year IT outsourcing contract with European travel company TUI Travel, to deploy managed infrastructure services and utilise its IT Infrastructure Library (ITIL) systems and cloud-based asset management capabilities for TUI Travel.

Under the agreement, Dell Services will help TUI Travel standardise its IT services that support its employees, with Service Desk offerings such as desktop, laptop, and printer support, and Managed Client services including Managed Active Directory and Exchange.

In addition, Dell Services will provide a single point of contact for resolving technical issues and offer 24/7 service desk support, utilising workflows, automated process tools and practices to help increase efficiencies and control costs, said Dell.

The IT outsourcing contract also includes the provision of hardware and use of Dell Managed Deployment Services, an end-to-end offering designed to help speed deployment time, save money, and provide planning and project management to support IT staff.

Further, Dell Managed Print Services will be utilised to assist TUI Travel in modernising its printer fleet, which will help decrease the total cost of printing, claims the company.

Dell said that the services will be provided initially in the UK, Germany, France, Spain, the Netherlands and Switzerland.

Dell Services director Eric Velfre said with a standardised tool set and cloud-based infrastructure, they are excited to help TUI Travel drive cost savings and improve productivity for its operations across 180 countries.

Source:http://servicemanagement.cbronline.com/news/dell-services-bags-it-outsourcing-contract-from-tui-travel-010311

Firms unite to fight ‘frequency and sophistication’ of threats

Dell has continued its push into the services sector with the acquisition of SecureWorks, a firm that specialises in managed security and threat intelligence. Financial terms were not disclosed although Dell did confirm it was a cash transaction.

The move is the latest effort from Dell to push into the services arena, a strategy that was given a massive kick when it acquired Perot Systems for $3.9bn in 2009. The SecureWorks Security as a Service platform will help Dell Services’ BPO and IT outsourcing capabilities, the firm said, and help meet demand from customers for more “as-a-Service” products via a managed services offering.

The deal is a sign of the growing importance of security and compliance to businesses and echoes HP’s acquisition of ArcSight for $1.5bn. SecureWorks deals with more than 13 billion “security events” and sees more than 30,000 malware specimens each day, Dell said. Michael Cote, CEO of SecureWorks, added that the company defines a “security event” as a potential security threat.

“The frequency and sophistication of attacks on technology infrastructure and malicious attempts to access data, requires reliable, capable and innovative information security,” said Peter Altabef, president, Dell Services. “SecureWorks is a recognised industry leader in information security services and its offerings and expertise will immediately enhance our solutions portfolio.”

“We look forward to welcoming SecureWorks team members – who bring their passion and dedication to serving clients with best-in-class security services – to Dell and our clients,” Altabef said. He confirmed in a conference call that the SecureWorks leadership team will remain with Dell.

SecureWorks claims to have just under 3,000 customers, ranging from financial services firms to healthcare companies and it is said around 15% of the Fortune 500 use the company’s services. It was founded in 1999 and is headquartered in Atlanta, Georgia.

SecureWorks has around 700 employees and projects FY2010 revenue of $120m. Using this revenue figure, CBR estimates the deal to be worth $300m – $450m.

Source:http://security.cbronline.com/news/dell-beefs-up-security-as-a-service-with-secureworks-buy-040111

The telemarketing industry has witnessed some sharp rises in the growth chart. Studies conducted on call center units by various independent surveys have validated that. It’s true that last year the BPO sector was not really working wonders for the employees or for the economy. Things started to change for the better during the early months of this year. The first quarter, from January to March, paid great dividends to the telemarketing services. Encouraged by their success, the call centers went all out in the second quarter to attain something bigger than it was last time. The efforts were not less than what was desired. However, things didn’t turn out well for the BPO service. The spike of the first quarter was followed by a dip in the next.

There are some valid reasons why the telemarketing sector couldn’t repeat the performance of the first quarter. The main reason is the amount of offshore BPO outsourcing that is happening on the global scene. Call centers in the developed countries are going dry because the projects are not really there for them to work on. Telemarketing services being outsourced to the developing countries meant that the domestic projects were not coming to them. The business firms would, of course, prefer offshore BPO service because of the cost cuts that they can avail. The money generated in these deals is less than what it would have been for call center units in the developed countries. The lesser sum of money involved is why the total revenue generated dipped in the second quarter.

Another reason is the Do Not Call (DNC) list. The telemarketing agents are hugely restricted by the growing importance of the DNC list. Telecom authorities across the world are coming down heavily on telemarketing services that violate the DNC list. Call centers are being burdened with law suits and penalties. Previously, the call center units could get away with these violations. The situation has changed in the present scenario. Now, you have the authorities enforcing the penalties in an active, aggressive way. Clients are wary about BPO units that have a legal hassle to deal with. No client would want to associate themselves with such a BPO service unit and bring harm to their brand image. That’s something that the business process outsourcing firms will have to be careful about.

The telemarketing sector may also have been hit with the increased dependence on the internet for lead generation. Voice calls are passé for many clients and companies. They want to use Web 2.0 tools for their sales lead generation. The result is that the call center units are relying on social media networks and websites to promote products/services. The search engine optimization (SEO) efforts of the BPO unit make them come off as the market leaders in BPO service. In fact, SEO is now a distinct part of the call center services. The outbound call center agents are spending more time in creating profiles and maintaining them on social media networks than in calling people.

Source:http://www.freeezinearticles.com/2010/08/10/why-telemarketing-growth-took-a-dip/

Small and large businesses are facing substantial competition. To run the business fruitfully, you have to exclude the non-core activity such as data entry services, data conversion services and data processing services. By having data processing services from outside, you can simply reduce the focus over non-productive tasks. Processing of data and transforming it into useful information is called data processing Services.

Data processing services contain all the steps till electronic format output. There are numbers of data processing services which helps you to achieve highest goals. Some of the services are mentioned below:

Form Processing: In various businesses, various kinds of forms are used. For example vouchers, invoices, Resumes, survey, HTML, tax forms, CGI forms, Legal and email forms. Translating all such forms in electronic format helps your business to gain access the accurate information punctually.

Insurance Claim Processing: Insurance is written agreement of reimbursement against loss by insurance companies. By having insurance claim processing, you can manage your claim and get reimbursement quickly.

Check Processing: Checks are the main transaction unit for businesses. If there is any mistake while processing checks, business must suffer from low reputation. Check processing helps you to increase the reputation of your business.

Image Processing services: You can make your catalog and brochure more eye-catching by having good images in it. You will get high quality images by processing them. Some good images make your catalog and brochure more attractive to catch the attention of clients and customers.

These types of data processing services are useful to run the business proficiently. By having data processing services, you can get numerous benefits. Some of the benefits are mentioned below:

Data is synchronized and improved to useful information that is very easy to understand

Information is more precise to make right decision

Through these services, the turnaround time can be decreased.

You can simply protect the information and can also take backup copy to fight against unexpected data loss.

Business executive can be more productive and produce more opportunities.

You save a big amount of cost as you are signing data processing services vendor.

In conclusion, data processing services are one of the significant services for your business. Such services make your business to achieve highest level of goals in less time. It helps your business to get the quick success in the strong competition.

Source:http://fusionbposervice.blogsome.com/2010/08/06/when-to-get-answering-service/

Whether for specific processes, or across the full range of Human Resources (HR) activities, outsourcing is a proven and viable strategy to increase the performance of the HR Function.However, there is no single formula that applies to all organisations; HR Outsourcing (HRO) is being used to address varying strategic objectives and its scope will differ in terms of HR processes and geographies involved. Organisations need a framework to help them consider the value of HRO to their organisation and their specific circumstances.

The HRO Value Equation

Traditionally, business processing outsourcing is seen as a means of driving efficiency through cost reduction.Whilst the financial business case is important and should always be understood, forward thinking organisations will consider other factors, in addition to cost reduction, when evaluating and designing HRO solutions. HRO value can be considered to be a function of a number of interrelated factors. Different organisations will have different drivers and choices for each of these factors, resulting in different HRO value propositions. We can refer to this wider view as “Balancing the HRO Value Equation” to provide the specific HRO value proposition that is right for your organisation.

Figure 1 – The HRO Value Equation

Figure 1 sets out the HRO Value Equation as a function of Cost Reduction, the HR Service Model, Business Flexibility, and the Retained HR Organisation. Â Organisations can use this framework to develop and assess the benefits side of a business case for HR Outsourcing, but also need to recognise that these elements are interrelated, for example, the size of the Retained HR organisation will influence the overall Cost Reduction opportunity.

Cost Reduction

Cost Reduction will almost certainly be a key factor for HRO and is generally delivered via labour arbitrage when moving HR work to lower cost locations. HRO should also provide efficiency savings through the aggregation and consolidation of work into fewer locations using specialised delivery resources. Indeed most HRO solutions have some elements of work that cannot be easily moved out of the home country and so aggregation becomes an important source of labour cost saving.

Though less often included as hard savings in a business case, HR costs opportunities can also go beyond the HR Function and into the wider business when HRO provides an improved HR Service Model and a more effective Retained HR organisation, e.g. through more effective recruiting, reduced attrition and more efficient Manager-Employee interaction.

Organisations need to be realistic when estimating the degree of cost reduction that can be achieved; this requires a detailed understanding of the current HR baseline and the extent of the work that an outsourcing service provider will take on, and also that work which will be retained.Â

HR Service Model

The first consideration has to be what to outsource and to whom?
For some it will be about outsourcing single or specific processes to specialised suppliers, e.g. for Payroll, HR Data Management, Benefits Administration, or Recruitment.For others a full-scope outsourcing to a single generalist supplier will be the right model. A Part of this consideration needs to take account of the extent of HR process standardisation and the how technology can be used to transform HR services.

The quickest way to cost reduction might be a lift-and-shift of the current HR delivery model, but this is unlikely to maximise the long term cost reduction opportunity and will do little to address any fundamental HR service issues.Transformation of the service model provides an opportunity to gain additional efficiency savings and also improve the quality and timeliness of HR services.

Global and multi-national organisations will also need to consider how to service the long of countries where there are relatively few employees and hence insufficient scale of HR activity to drive a financial case for outsourcing.One approach is to outsource global, common HR processes that can be delivered from a centralised off-shore location and to retain local HR processes where there is less scale and more local content. A hybrid HR Service Model such as this might see all countries served by centralised and outsourced HR Data Management and Performance Management Administration and International Assignment services, with other services such as Payroll and Benefits Administration being retained for countries with fewer employees and outsourced only for larger populations.

Business Flexibility

Moving to outsourced HR delivery can turn relatively fixed HR costs into variable costs that can scale with business changes such as acquisitions, divestitures, growth in new markets and contraction in times of economic downturn.In addition, the use of an outsourcing partner can provide access to a larger talent pool to enable faster and lower risk delivery of key HR initiatives such as the introduction of new benefits programmes, or compliance with changing legislative and regulatory requirements.

The degree of individual process flexibility is also influenced by the nature of the HRO service provider’s solution; a utility (one solution for many clients) payroll platform will suit most organisations, but plans to introduce a flexible benefits programme could be constrained if this is not offered by the HRO service provider.

Planning for the right degree of flexibility in an HRO arrangement is an important element of the overall value proposition and the need for such flexibility needs to be accounted for in contractual arrangements with the HRO service provider.

Retained HR
Establishing the right retained HR Organisation is a critical success factor for successful HRO, whilst responsibility for specific HR services may move to an outsourcer, the client organisation must remain accountable for the HR Function.The challenge is to put in place a retained organisation which can govern the outsourcing relationship using an arms-length service management approach and which does not revert to previous practices and detailed involvement in HR service delivery as doing so will undermine the value of using an HRO service provider.

The retained HR organisation needs to recognise that HR services have transferred and then focus on more strategic support for the business, for example, planning the skills profiles required to support overall business strategy, managing and developing talent, supporting the business in deploying key HR initiatives etc.

Realising the benefits of a more strategic role for HR, together with the need for new HRO governance activity is very likely to require the acquisition and development of new skills in the retained HR organisation.

The HRO Value Equation provides a simple and useful framework for developing and assessing the benefits of a business case for HRO that go beyond pure cost reduction and which can be aligned to the over-arching business and HR strategies that are specific to each organisation organisation. These can then be set against the costs of transitioning and delivering outsourced HR services to provide a comprehensive business case.

Source:http://youssefmzaoui.typepad.com/blog/2010/08/hr-outsourcing-balancing-the-value-equation.html

For businesses still trying to handle payroll services in-house there are a range of difficulties which could potentially cause widespread problems, Outsourcing payroll services offers many very significant benefits.

United Kingdom, August 2010 – A great many businesses still maintain their own internal payroll system in-house, often with just a single member of staff responsible for managing the payroll services. However, by managing the payroll in-house businesses face several major challenges, including the risk that through ill-health or unforeseen circumstances the member of staff responsible for handling the payroll is unable to complete the processing of payments on time, causing a range of problems for the staff and business. The cost of maintaining an in-house payroll system can also be very expensive, including maintaining the space, the technical equipment, software, licensing, bank fees and the salary of the member of staff responsible for processing the payroll. Technical breakdowns, computer malfunctions and telecommunications problems can all interfere, and when the issues are added up and considered it becomes very clear that outsourcing payroll services to a company such as E-Slip makes a good deal more sense in the long run.

E-Slip is a UK company which provides payroll services for businesses and organisations that need to streamline their payroll operation, cut costs and ensure a completely uninterruptable, reliable payroll service that can be handled quickly, efficiently and reliably whenever required. Whether the payroll needs to be updated daily, weekly or monthly, and regardless of how many alterations, updates and amendments are necessary, E-Slip is able to provide a personal level of service and direct contact which enables businesses to get on with their business whilst the payroll services is handled quickly and efficiently, saving the business time and money. E-Slip handles the payroll services of many major businesses in the UK, and has a reputation for being able to respond quickly, turnaround payroll processing very quickly and provide savings of up to 75% compared to processing payrolls in-house.

Source:http://www.addpr.com/articles/business/38164.html

Dell’s vice president EMEA, Ferenc Szelenyi, has once again provided us with his thoughts on outsourcing. This time he talks about how the industry is changing following the recession.

I was particularly interested in his view that companies will increasingly redeploy staff when they outsource rather than transfer them to suppliers. This is because I recently wrote a blog about this.

Here is Ferenc Szelenyi’s latest contribution to Inside Outsourcing.

“Last year was not a great one for the IT outsourcing (ITO) sector, with growth slowing due to a confluence of factors that gave ITO service providers a serious body blow.

Many service providers were still suffering from the aftershock of the global recession, a far cry from a few years back when organisations raced to outsource because of the scarcity of their resources. New market entrants, alongside the big players such as India and China, put pressure on prices as buyers embraced the clear cost savings produced by labour arbitrage.

Today, various business sectors are going through a phase of consolidation and rationalisation within the context of the global economic meltdown. Therefore, potential and existing Customers of IT Service Providers including those within Dell are looking for opportunities to:

Rationalise and de-duplicate their application services portfolio

Upgrade and transform their IT platforms gaining potential cost savings from cloud technologies and lower emission hardware

Rationalise back-office processes and in turn reduce complexity in their business and how their IT is managed today

Not necessarily look to transfer staff to a provider but rather re-deploy into more strategic areas of the business or new projects

Furthermore, providers are now looking to provide “end to end” “open” solutions but that seek to transform the IT architecture in a modular manner providing flexibility around capex and opex and how these items are managed in a transaction. Partnerships with customers is not uncommon in the IT Services industry that enables the transformed state of a customers IT to be leverageable and scalable to suite other similar businesses or customers. In fact, this area of opportunity will grow significantly as public sector and private sector businesses consolidate and rationalise their IT Systems.”

Source:http://www.computerweekly.com/blogs/inside-outsourcing/2010/08/it-outsourcing-is-in-transition-following-recession.html