IBM, the No. 2 computer services provider, took the wraps off a 900,000 square-foot data center in India for Tulip Telecom, one of that nation’s fast-growing telecommunications carriers.

The Bangalore center, a year in the making, cost “in the hundreds of millions of dollars,” IBM VP for global sites and facilities services Steve Sams said in an interview. He declined to be more specific.

The center is India’s biggest and Tulip Telcom has already invited in the chief information officers of India’s top 150 companies to show them its capabilities, Sams said. Morever, another leading U.S. technology company, which he refused to identify, is also conducting operations in the IBM center, he added.

Armonk, N.Y. based IBM is far from the only U.S. information technology company with many personnel and officers in India. Others including Hewlett-Packard, Accenture, Intel, Microsoft, Cisco Systems and Oracle have Indian operations, some for outsourcing for multinational clients but now increasingly to serve Indian customers.

Tulip Telecom, which provides business-to-business services rather than focus on the consumer, approached IBM for a long-term partnership more than a year ago, Sams said. Tulip CEO and founder Hardeep S. Bedi said he had chosen the 101-year-old U.S. company for its “global expertise in designing and building innovative energy efficient cloud data centers that should support our needs now and in the future.”

Besides Bangalore, the heart of the Indian IT sector, New Delhi-basedTulip may ask IBM to build another data center in Mumbai, the country’s financial center, the IBM VP said.

Only about half of the ultra-modern center’s space will be used for computing services, Sams explained. The other half will be for support services, including an extremely efficient power system designed with redundant services.

Sams, who said he has a staff of 1,000, including mechanical engineers as well as IT professionals and electrical engineers, said more such centers are in the works. One that has been announced is an IBM complex in China for Range Technology, intended to be the largest cloud computing complex in Asia.

IBM shares rose 53 cents to close at $193.35 Tuesday. They have gained 5 percent so far this year. Shares of Tulip closed down 6 percent at 108.2 rupees in Indian trading Tuesday.

Source:http://www.ibtimes.com/articles/294333/20120207/ibm-data-tulip-center-outsourcing-services-india.htm

Under the deal, IBM will assume responsibility for the development and support of PJSC Ukrsotsbank’s information systems and applications as well as the management of the bank’s IT infrastructure.

Big Blue takes over the management and maintenance of PJSC Ukrsotsbank’s application portfolio, data centre systems, IT network, ATMs, end-user and deskside support.

The move will help the bank make significant operational savings, improve customer service, increase performance efficiency and lower operational risk across a country-wide network of nearly 400 branches, says the vendor.

The deal follows PJSC Ukrsotsbank’s recent migration to a new core banking system and UniCredit hopes that this, coupled with performance improvements derived from the IBM collaboration, will offer a model it can export to other parts of the business.

Francesco Pusateri, head, global banking services, UniCredit, says: “Having already successfully migrated and centralised PJSC Ukrsotsbank’s core banking systems, this decision will help us to strengthen our leadership in the Ukrainian banking sector. Leveraging IBM’s technology assets and industry experience we are able to transform the way we work and run our operations.”

Joseph Benaroya, VP, IBM global technology services, adds: “This is the first instance of full outsourcing in the region and marks a new era in the IT delivery model and in the development of Ukraine’s financial services sector. Banks across growth markets are currently under enormous pressure to reduce costs and operational complexities while at the same time improve the customer experience.”

Source:http://www.finextra.com/news/fullstory.aspx?newsitemid=23404

In his first interview with ZDNet Australia since taking over the role from long-running CIO John Wadeson in October last year, the former ANZ CIO said that as part of the department’s Service Delivery Reform program, long-running contracts that IBM has with Medicare and HP has with the Child Support Program (CSP) will not be renewed, and will instead be brought in house, in line with other agencies in the mega-department.

“It’s about value creation,” he said. “The Centrelink program … has a huge capacity, because of the strengths that can be shared. Harvesting that value is what we’re going to be doing in the next two to three years.”

In this financial year’s Federal Budget, the department was given $530 million to consolidate the ICT systems for each agency within the department. DHS also successfully integrated the Department of Veteran Affairs completely at the end of 2011, and Sterrenberg said that should the government require it, DHS is in a good position to acquire other government agencies.

“What we’ve created by the integration of the agencies is set up, almost like the business term would be, a mergers and acquisition capability to [integrate other agencies]“.

Sterrenberg said that this capability would work better for agencies that deliver services directly to the public, and would be particularly useful in the event of a disaster.

“You want to be able to deploy a range of services to the broader community, and having a service arm like DHS enables that,” he said. “Everything we do, we think about whole of government. I think there’s a lot of good thinking around where we can help each other. If you can do it working together, that’s the way to go.”

One of the major projects under the Service Delivery Reform program is to consolidate 14 DHS datacentres into just three, and Sterrenberg revealed that the department is already ahead of schedule on this initiative.

“We’ve completed a lot of the mainframe work. We’ve moved CSP onto the mainframe; we’ve moved DVA onto the mainframe. We’ve moved most of CSP out. We’ve closed Macquarie and Bruce, [and] we’ve got most of the stuff out of Belconnen.”

Sterrenberg said that the timetable for moving out of datacentres tends to be determined by when the leases for those locations end. The department is now in the planning stages for moving Medicare out, which Sterrenberg said could have been done earlier, were it not for the IBM contract.

“We believe we could have gone quicker with Medicare, but we have a sourcing contract with IBM, so it makes sense to do it that way,” he said.

Despite the hurdles, Sterrenberg said that by the end of 2012, the department will be six to nine months ahead of schedule on the datacentre consolidation.

Moving to a common communications platform would be a much larger task for Human Services. The infrastructure planning, such as the directory design for the platform, was completed in September, Sterrenberg said, and a small pilot of 500 desktops running Windows 7 was completed at the end of 2011, but there is a huge task ahead to roll it out to all 37,000 DHS staff.

“It’s about bridging multiple domains, multiple networks, moving four to five SoEs [standard operating environments] to a single SoE, to move to a single IP-addressing layer across everything, and create a single environment for all DHS people,” he said.

“The hard work is right to get the construct right, so that it cannot just service the current DHS agencies, but also whatever comes beyond.”

The aim is to have 10,000 desktops rolled out by June, and an additional 15,000 by the end of 2012, leaving just over 10,000 left for the next year. The desktops will have thin clients, so department staff will be able to log in using a swipe card, as part of a two-factor authentication process. This roll-out will also bring about the end of Lotus Notes for Centrelink and Medicare, which has been on the cards since 2010.
Moving from ANZ to Human Services

Sterrenberg praised the legacy of his long-time predecessor John Wadeson, and the 3800 IT staff under him.

“It’s actually better than expected. I was very pleasantly surprised that the previous CIO John Wadeson left a really good legacy. You don’t do that overnight; it’s four or five years in the making,” he said. “Particularly in the quality of staff we have in the ICT are exceptional. We have a very sound base to work from.

“I would rate some of our mainframe teams as the best, certainly in Australia, if not broader.”

He said that he sees a lot of similarities between coming from a bank to moving to Human Services, particularly given the volume of payments the department makes to the general public, and the back-end technologies used. He said that desktop consolidations and desktop roll-outs are all experiences that the private sector knows well, although he said that the government is about a year behind corporate Australia.

One of the major differences, he said, is that the government role is a lot more transparent.

“Everything you do is very open for all to see, and I think that is the right thing. We’re dealing with huge amounts of investments of public money, and, as such, that level of scrutiny has to be there,” he said.

But that’s a powerful motivator, too.

“One of the things I was saying to an ex-banking colleague the other day is that you don’t wake up without motivation. Everything you do is delivering a service to the community. And you just know it has a huge responsibility attached to it, because if our systems do not pay, people will not have money for rent, will not have money for food, in some cases,” he said, adding that his staff feel that way, too.

“They’re absolutely passionate about providing service to their customer, and in some way that motivation is not always there in corporations I’ve worked for in the past,” he said.

Recruiting the right skills set is still an issue for Human Services, though, and he said that the department is looking for more workers outside of Canberra, where it is much tougher to find workers. The department is also continuing to work with universities to encourage school leavers to take up ICT degrees to get those skills, but he said that a lot of it has to do with public perception of those roles.

“I think there is a view that you are a code cutter, whereas nowadays, a very small portion of the work is code cutting,” he said.

He said that working for the government is also undersold to students.

“We actually are using some of the latest technologies to serve the communities, and I don’t think it is well understood. Everything that you do in corporate you can do for us and more. The cherry on the cake is that you’re serving the community. You’re making a difference.”

Source:http://www.zdnet.com.au/human-services-ends-ibm-hp-outsourcing-339330003.htm

The European Commission (EC), the executive body of the European Union, has awarded 27 IBM Data Centers for energy efficiency, based on the European Union (EU) Code of Conduct for Data Centers. The honor represents the largest portfolio of data centers from a single company to receive the recognition.

The EU Code of Conduct was created in response to increasing energy consumption in data centers. The EU aims to inform and encourage data center operators and owners to reduce energy consumption in a cost-effective manner without decreasing mission-critical data center functions. The assessment is made against a set of best practices to reduce energy losses, which include using energy-efficient hardware, installing free cooling, and cold aisle containment.

Power usage effectiveness (PUE) is an indicator for how efficiently a computer data center uses its power. In May, the Uptime Institute gave IBM data centers a rating of 1.65 for average power usage compared to the industry average of 1.8.

The awarded 27 IBM Green Data Centers represent more than 70 percent of IBM’s strategic outsourcing data centers in 15 European countries. Many of the data centers also have been designed to support cloud computing. The energy improvements implemented in these data centers helped IBM meet a goal set in 2007 to double the IT capacity of its data centers within three years without increasing the power consumption.

“Data centers have always been a critical part of IBM’s heritage and are a significant part of our energy use and costs,” said Harry van Dorenmalen, IBM chairman, Europe. “The recognition of our commitment and leadership by the EU Code of Conduct is important to us since energy and climate related issues are part of IBM’s long standing corporate commitment to environmental leadership. Based on our Smarter Planet vision we can substantially reduce energy consumption in many ways in our society.”

IBM uses analytics to operate its data centers, implementing the company’s Mobile Measurement Technology (MMT), which was developed by IBM Research. This technology instruments the data centers with thousands of sensors to record and analyze temperatures and air flow to detect hot and cold spots. By providing energy flow insight, MMT provides the intelligence to efficiently cool data centers with a high measure of security and reliability, and significant reduction in cost.

IBM also maintains energy efficiency leadership in its data centers by deploying uniform practices around the world including replacing older hardware with more energy-efficient servers, industry-leading server consolidation and virtualization rates, and efficient use of electric power and air cooling in data center facility operations. IBM services has leveraged its operational excellence from running energy-efficient data centers to help hundreds of clients in Europe and around the world achieve similar results.

Source:http://www.sustainableplant.com/2012/01/european-commission-honors-ibm-data-centers-for-energy-efficiency/

IBM) today announced the European Commission (EC), the executive body of the European Union, has awarded 27 IBM Data Centers for energy efficiency, based on the European Union (EU) Code of Conduct for Data Centers. The honor represents the largest portfolio of data centers from a single company to receive the recognition.

The EU Code of Conduct was created in response to increasing energy consumption in data centers. The EU aims to inform and encourage data center operators and owners to reduce energy consumption in a cost-effective manner without decreasing mission critical data center functions. The assessment is made against a set of best practices to reduce energy losses which include the usage of energy efficient hardware, installing free cooling and cold aisle containment. Power usage effectiveness (PUE) is an indicator for how efficiently a computer data center uses its power. In May, the Uptime Institute gave IBM data centers a rating of 1.65 for average power usage compared to the industry average of 1.8.

The awarded 27 IBM Green Data Centers represent over 70 percent of IBM’s strategic outsourcing data centers in 15 European countries. Many of the data centers have also been designed to support cloud computing, in an effort to help clients around the world operate smarter. The energy improvements implemented in these data centers helped IBM meet a goal set in 2007 to double the IT capacity of its data centers within three years without increasing the power consumption.

“Data centers have always been a critical part of IBM’s heritage and are a significant part of our energy use and costs,” said Harry van Dorenmalen, IBM Chairman, Europe. “The recognition of our commitment and leadership by the EU Code of Conduct is important to us since energy and climate related issues are part of IBM’s long standing corporate commitment to environmental leadership. Based on our Smarter Planet vision we can substantially reduce energy consumption in many ways in our society.”

IBM uses analytics to operate its data centers, implementing the company’s Mobile Measurement Technology (MMT), which was developed by IBM Research. This technology instruments the data centers with thousands of sensors to record and analyze temperatures and air flow to detect hot and cold spots. By providing energy flow insight, MMT provides the intelligence to efficiently cool its data centers with a high measure of security and reliability and significant reduction in cost.

IBM also maintains energy efficiency leadership in its data centers by deploying uniform practices around the world including replacing older hardware equipment with more energy efficient servers, industry-leading server consolidation and virtualization rates and efficient, intelligent use of electric power and air cooling in data center facility operations. IBM services has leveraged its operational excellence from running energy efficient data centers to help hundreds of clients in Europe and around the world achieve similar results.

The 27 IBM Green Data Centers that have been honored by the EC represent over 70 percent of IBM’s strategic outsourcing data centers in 15 European countries. The energy improvements implemented in these data centers helped IBM meet a goal to double their IT capacity within three years without increasing their power consumption.

Source:http://www.sacbee.com/2012/01/05/4164778/european-commission-awards-ibm.html

Despite some hopeful fits and starts, the U.S. economy didn’t escape the doldrums in 2011. Unemployment remained stubbornly high, the U.S. debt-ceiling crisis and budget scuffles spurred more economic uncertainty, and Europe’s ongoing financial problems threatened global markets. If there’s an upside, at least it’s familiar territory.

“Back in 2008, nobody knew what was going to happen as a result of the global financial crisis and IT spending almost stopped overnight,” says Richard Gordon, a research vice president at Gartner. “We’re not in that kind of situation now. The solutions to the problems [in the U.S. and Europe] are understood and known. The question is now, is there a political way to execute and make them happen?”

Against the worrisome economic backdrop, enterprises have continued to spend on IT, albeit with caution. IT budgets grew in 2011, but not by much when the impact of exchange rates is factored in.

“If you look at constant dollars — in other words, if you strip out exchange rates — we’ve seen marginal growth in 2011 in the very low single digits, maybe 1 percent or 2 percent globally,” Gordon says. Healthier growth in emerging economies compensated for sluggish growth in the U.S. and Europe, but the net effect is essentially flat IT spending in 2011 compared to 2010.

We’ll see more of the same in 2012, Gordon says. “From an enterprise IT perspective, folks are planning for a period of slow economic growth.”

Research firm IDC is more bullish, estimating that worldwide IT spending will grow 6.9 percent year over year to $1.8 trillion in 2012. A healthy chunk of spending — as much as 20 percent, IDC says — will be driven by a handful of technologies that are reshaping the IT industry: smartphones, media tablets, mobile networks,social networking and big data analytics.

Mobility is introducing significant management and security headaches for IT, while at the same time enabling the business to increase employee productivity and improve customer service. Social networking is spawning a treasure trove of customer data, but also creating an enormous challenge for companies that want to make any sense of all that data.

Fighting for talent
As companies try to balance the technical challenges and opportunities, they’re also grappling with a shortage of skilled professionals. IT pros with application development, virtualization or cloud computing skills are in short supply, as are those with business analytics expertise.

The number of available IT jobs in the U.S. is up about 12 percent compared to a year ago, and demand for tech professionals is expected to get even stronger in 2012, according to Dice.com. When the jobs site surveyed 1,200 IT hiring managers and recruiters, 65 percentsaid they’re planning to add tech pros in the first half of 2012. Among those in hiring mode, 27 percent said they plan to expand headcount by more than 20 percent. (See “Can you keep your IT staff in 2012?”)

Tech pros with in-demand skills and relevant experience aren’t having trouble finding jobs, says Jack Cullen, president of IT staffing and recruiting firm Modis. “If candidates have strong skills, robust backgrounds, and they communicate well, they’re getting snapped up fast,” he says. In fact, many hiring managers haven’t adjusted to the new pace. “They’re still slow to react, still very deliberate in the hiring cycle,” Cullen says. “They’re really looking for that quality hire.”

Cars.com has been on an IT hiring spree for the past year and remains bullish as 2012 kicks off and the hard-hit automotive industry’s recovery continues.

“We’re optimistic,” says Bill Swislow, CIO at Cars.com, a pricing and reviews site for online car shoppers. “We suffered in the recession just like everyone else, but the auto industry has been rebounding. Even though we’re still not close to pre-recession levels of auto sales, the incremental climb in sales has been pretty steady.”

As a result, Cars.com has been investing heavily in IT. “In 2010 and 2011 we made substantial investments. We increased headcount, increased overall IT spending and executed a number of different strategic initiatives and infrastructure upgrades,” Swislow says.

That growth will continue in 2012, he says, though he won’t be increasing headcount by as much as he did in 2011, when his IT team grew by about 30 percent. Swislow is predicting about 10 percent growth in headcount for 2012.

On the project front, Cars.com is planning a handful of major projects in 2012, including reengineering its CRM and fulfillment systems, deploying a new data warehouse platform, and rolling out new business intelligence technologies.

“There’s an increasing market expectation with our customers, especially car dealers, that they can log into a tool and see real-time metrics. Our current data warehouse architecture requires an overnight batch process, and we want to load continuously throughout the day,” Swislow says. “On the business intelligence layer, we’re looking to greatly upgrade our visualization and dashboard capabilities, both for internal use and for customer-facing reporting.”

Successful execution of some major IT projects over the last couple of years — in particular shifting from a waterfall to an agile development methodology, which dramatically increased developer productivity — makes it easier to justify further increases in headcount and IT budgets, Swislow says. “Our ability to spend effectively enables us to make a credible case for spending more.”

Keeping it lean

Not all enterprises are staffing up and spending more, however. Many organizations are still struggling to pare back expenses.

IT headcount and budgets are remaining flat in the city of Ridgeland, Miss. “We’re still cautious,” says Joe Kirchner, information systems manager for the city. “We’re taking care of the essentials, and there’s beginning to be some optimism.”

A key project for 2012 will be to extend a VoIP rollout. Ridgeland analyzed its VoIP options for several years before starting to deploy the technology at city hall and the police department. Beginning in January, more city departments, including the fire department, will be brought on board.

Further out, Ridgeland is researching its options for a virtual desktop deployment, though the purchase won’t happen in 2012, Kirchner says. “We have a lot of legacy applications that communicate in a unique way, so you can’t rush to everything.”

The city of Ridgeland is replacing IT staff who leave, but it’s not adding new positions. Nucleus Research says it’s seeing more of that: IT departments putting money into technology rather than more personnel. Among the ROI-driven case studies Nucleus published in 2011, 60 percent said they were able to reduce or avoid adding staff as a benefit of technology investments. (See story, “The CIO’s lament: 20-somethings who quit after a year.”)

“With uncertainty about what corporate taxes are going to look like in 2012, and what unemployment is going to look like, companies are opting to invest in technology that makes their existing employees more productive,” says Rebecca Wettemann, vice president of research at the firm.

Know thy customer and business
Enterprises are deploying technologies that can help them improve customer service, analyze data for better decision making, and get the most out of their workforce.

Companies have continued to spend on CRM, even during the recession, because it’s important for businesses to know their customers — to be able to identify and retain the customers who generate profit for the company, to cut loose the ones who don’t, and to track new customers who are willing to spend, Wettemann says. “For every dollar you spend on CRM, you get $5.60 back.”

Analytics technology is hot because it enables businesses to make decisions based on data instead of gut, and it doesn’t require an enormous IT outlay. “We’ve seen companies make a relatively small investment, do a pilot analytics project, understand how the technology works, and see what it delivers in terms of returns,” Wettemann says.

In upstate New York, analytics are helping cash-strapped school districts to track academic performance trends and identify students who are most likely to benefit from targeted education services.

Nicole Catapano is data analysis coordinator at the Washington-Saratoga-Warren-Hamilton-Essex Board of Cooperative Educational Services (WSWHE BOCES), which serves 31 school districts in a five-county New York region. WSWHE BOCES manages and analyzes volumes of school data from different districts, customizing projects based on each district’s needs.

“We’re taking the burden of organization and analytics away from the school districts and helping them pinpoint where they should focus their time and attention regarding student achievement,” Catapano explains. “For one group we looked to see what variables predicted student readiness for college classes. In another district, we looked at early literacy indicators to see what skills students had or were lacking in order to be demonstrating a level of proficiency by third grade.”

Catapano’s team invested in predictive analytics software from IBM, which has significantly shortened the amount of time it takes to create a predictive model from weeks or even months to just days or hours.

Cloudy forecast
Cloud computing is another area of accelerated growth as 2012 gets underway. The shift from traditional IT acquisition models to public cloud services is still in the early stages but growing at much faster rate (19 percent annually through 2015) than overall enterprise IT spending, according to Gartner. (See “Cloud activity to explode in 2012.”)

The appeal of the cloud, with its potential to reduce capital expenses and enable greater IT agility, is proving strong enough to convince companies to entrust their data to a cloud provider. More than 50 percentof the world’s largest companies will have stored customer-sensitive data in the public cloud by year-end 2016, Gartner predicts. Under pressure to reduce costs and operate more efficiently, more than 20 percent of organizations are already selectively storing customer-sensitive data in a hybrid cloud environment, Gartner says.

Cars.com has adopted some software-as-a-service apps, and this year is implementing a cloud-based desktop backup solution. So far, it has resisted outsourcing its Web infrastructure to a cloud provider, though the appeal of a service that can handle extreme spikes in traffic (such as when Cars.com advertises during the Super Bowl) is tempting, Swislow says. “That’s something we continue to consider.”

In the financial services industry, the current economic environment and regulatory climate are driving firms that traditionally would have built and maintained their own trading infrastructures, and procured market data on their own, to consider outsourcing those functions to a provider such as NYSE Technologies, the tech division of NYSE Euronext.

“People are going to have to make painful decisions” as financial organizations work to cut costs, trim IT budgets and staff, and transform their operating models, says Stanley Young, CEO of NYSE Technologies.

“The natural tendency for all companies is to do everything themselves. Trusting somebody to provide a critical part of your infrastructure is a tough decision. But I think they’ve reached a tipping point where doing the same things they’ve always done is no longer an option.”

Mobile, social mayhem
Two complementary trends — the meteoric adoption of the mobile devices and the increasing use of personal smartphones and tablets for business purposes — are further disrupting the IT status quo and driving new investments.

Enterprises are grappling with how to incorporate employees’ mobile devices into existing corporate technology infrastructures. The city of Ridgeland, Miss., is so far prohibiting employees from using personal devices to access internal systems. Limited personnel is one reason, Kirchner says, along with the management and security challenges that employee-owned devices introduce. (Read: “Security minefield: Bring your own device will bedevil IT security in 2012.”)

Digirad, a maker of cameras used for medical purposes, allows employee-owned iPhones and iPads at work, but limits their application access. “We’re only trying to support email,” says Jon Martin, vice president of IT at Digirad. “And the users can’t contact us for advice. We say, ‘check with your provider.’”

A recent survey by the Enterprise Device Alliance found that 66 percent of organizations allow some employees to bring their own devices, which IT supports at least to some degree. But while employee-owned devices are showing up at work, many IT organizations are under-investing in tools to manage and secure those devices. Just 16 percent of organizations reported using mobile device management tools — a percentage that is expected to more than triple to 50 percent by the end of 2012.

There’s a similar tug-of-war going on in the social media realm.

Sales and marketing teams want to engage customers through social networking sites, end users want to access personal accounts from the workplace, and HR wants to be able to recruit, hire and retain social media-savvy employees. But IT doesn’t want to expose the company to unnecessary risk.

In a recent a Ponemon Institute survey, 63 percent of respondents said use of social media puts the organization at risk, and 52 percent said their organizations suffered increased virus and malware attacks as a result of employees’ use of social media. Yet only 29 percent have security controls in place to mitigate or reduce the risk.

Looking ahead, industry watchers say organizations will adopt enterprise tools that bundle compliance, content management and analytics features so companies can stay on top of content created by employees and measure the effectiveness of their social media activities.

In the big picture, enterprises aren’t waiting around for the economy to improve. IT executives are spending in new areas and dramatically rethinking how they acquire technology and deliver services to end users. After a period of unrelenting focus on cost-cutting, these course adjustments are a breath of fresh air.

Source:http://www.cio.in/article/mobility-cloud-analytics-reshape-it-2012

IBM is the prime contractor in a $2.6 billion deal signed by the Spanish savings bank, la Caixa, to manage its IT infrastructure over the next 10 years. IBM services will account for about half of the total, with other third parties receiving the rest.

IBM will host la Caixa systems and its consultants will work with the bank’s IT unit, la Serveis Informaticas la Caiza, to manage la Caixa’s IT infrastructure running in Barcelona and Cerdanyola del Valles data centers. IBM also will work with the la Caixa team on developing mobile applications, cloud computing, and social media, according to an IBM announcement Thursday.

“This agreement allows us to offer better services to our clients and obtain competitive advantages in a sector in which innovation and new technologies are key to realizing growth,” said Juan Maria Nin, the bank’s general manager, in the IBM announcement.

The agreement also will allow la Caixa to save 400 million euros over the 10-year period, he said.

The bank expects to implement new mobile and cloud computing technologies to expand its business in Spain and other parts of the world. It aims to become recognized as using new technology to reach financial services customers, the announcement said.

The deal includes collaboration between la Caixa’s Innovation Center in Barcelona and IBM’s research centers. The IBM centers will funnel to the Innovation Center technologies aimed at consumer banking and innovations in business processes.

IBM has been a supplier and partner to la Caixa for 50 years, said Juan Zuiria, IBM general manager for Spain, Israel, Portugal, and Greece, in the announcement. That period makes the bank a customer of IBM’s first line of general-purpose mainframes, the IBM 360, launched in 1964, or even its 1401 computer, which preceded the 360 machines.

IBM has made a series of such banking deals around the world over the last six months. They include Westpac Bank in Auckland, New Zealand; Banco Santander in Spain and Latin America, one of the largest banks in the eurozone; and MCB Bank Limited in Pakistan.

Source:http://www.informationweek.com/news/global-cio/outsourcing/232301140

In 1H IBM witnessed significant traction beyond Telecom across sectors including Financial Services, Education, Manufacturing and from customers in tier two and tier three cities.

IBM today announced that it continues to gain market share and is the #1 player in Infrastructure Services with 18.2% market share, 8 percentage points ahead of its nearest competitor according to 1H 2011 IDC Asia/Pacific Half Yearly Services Tracker. Extending the leadership position in overall Services in 1H 2011, IBM has a 11.9% market share, two times its nearest competitor.

Strategic Outsourcing (SO) contributed significantly to the rise in the market share of IBM Global Technology Services (GTS), the Infrastructure Services business arm of IBM, in 1H11 by growing to 31.0% share, 13.9 percentage points ahead of its nearest competition. As per IDC, IBM’s SO revenue grew at 21%, which is 2% more than the industry average of 19%. IBM maintained its market leadership in Integrated Technology Services (ITS) and Maintenance & Technical Support Services (MTSS) in 1H11. This was driven by a rapid growth in managed services. As per IDC, IBM has a 10% market share each in ITS and MTS, around 5% and 4% points ahead of its nearest competition respectively.

In 1H IBM witnessed significant traction beyond Telecom across sectors including Financial Services, Education, Manufacturing and from customers in tier two and tier three cities.

Commenting on the company’s continued strong growth and market dominance, Ashish Kumar, General Manager, Global Technology Services, IBM India/ South Asia, said, “It’s a matter of great pride for IBM to not only be the market leader but to have increased its lead over competition. We will continue to redefine infrastructure landscape with our broad based skill sets spanning industries with technologies like Green Data Centers, Integrated Managed Services, Cloud, Smarter Planet solutions, etc thereby transforming business models and further consolidating our leadership position in the market.” Adding further, Ashish said, “With outcome based models becoming very popular, clients are looking for partners with experience and proven track record. The key differentiator between IBM & any other Services company is a big portion of $ 6 Bn investment in R&D is being spent on Services advancing our capabilities for innovative industry solutions.”

“Continued focus on the market and new initiatives give leading vendors the edge to retain existing customers as well as new client’s acquisition. The key is customer centric approach and to focus energies around themes which will rule the market growth in immediate future like managed services, flexibility through cloud, mobility, infrastructure services, consolidation etc” says Nirupam Chaudhuri, Research Manager – Software and Services, IDC.

Source:http://www.indiainfoline.com/Markets/News/IBM-posted-18.2-percent-market-share-in-Infrastructure-Services/5309186806

Kenyan Business Processing Outsourcing (BPOs) and IT service firms want the current procurement rules changed to boost competitiveness citing dominance by international counterparts.

They want the government to make it mandatory for international firms to partner with local companies when bidding for IT project tenders, a move expected to encourage skills transfer and boost chances of getting a piece of the multi-million shilling ICT funds.

Mr Nik Nesbitt, the chief executive of Kencall, says lack of financial and technical capability has made it difficult for Kenyan firms to clinch the tenders on their own.

“Local BPOs lack the experience being enjoyed by our competitors from countries like India and this is why we are asking the government to change the procurement rules and make it a must for the foreign firms to partner with the locals,” said Mr Nesbitt.

“We require a radical surgery on government policies in order to grow the BPO/IT sector, otherwise growth will be very slow,” he said.

The only Kenyan BPO firm that has managed to secure a government tender to digitise States law and the Judiciary documents is Digital Space, but only after partnering with DPH of India.

The push by the local BPO firms is mainly targeting tenders in the Ministry of Registration and Immigration of persons, department of births and deaths and that of Land. Already the Lands ministry has started its tendering process.

It comes just when a survey released by the Kenya ICT Board , dubbed Julisha notes that the country has been unable to develop an adequate pool of skilled IT personnel due to lack of big IT projects. “The common view was that there may not be enough big IT projects that can churn out a pool of skilled personnel— consequently there are not enough projects that allows professionals to exhibit or develop their skills,” read part of the Survey.

Mr Nesbitt’s position to compel the foreign firms to partner with the locals is supported by Mr Henry Njoroge, chief executive officer of Xtranet and Techno Brain BPO.

Mr Njoroge told the Business Daily that while the government may be encouraging partnerships, making it a requirement through changing the procurement rules will ensure that local firms are included in the large ongoing projects.

“What the government should do is come up with new procurement guidelines that stipulate that since technology is at the heart of Vision 2030, any company that is doing a government project that has never been done before must partner with a local company. All tenders should demand a partnership document with a local company,” said Mr Njoroge.

In the current situation, major outsourcing contracts from multinationals, similarly, are unlikely to land in the hands of local companies, primarily because the clients are extending their business to firms they have worked with in other markets, analysts say.

This year, foreign firms Accenture, IBM, Payment Solutions, SPANCO, and Tech Mahindra have won outsourcing contracts worth millions of shillings from the public sector and multinationals.

Payment Solutions Ltd, a South African firm, recently won a government tender to manage the public sector payroll in a bid to ensure civil servants do not commit more than two-thirds of their salary to paying debt.

IBM Corp, a US-based firm, and two Indian outsourcing firms — Tech Mahindra and SPANCO — have signed a Sh40 billion deal with telecoms giant Airtel to set up a five-year call centre service in Kenya and 15 other countries in Africa where Airtel operates.

Source:http://www.businessdailyafrica.com/BPOs+seek+level+playing+field+with+foreigners/-/1248928/1278168/-/d8yo5dz/-/

Indian information technology (IT) services biggies Infosys, Wipro and IBM are in discussion with tower infrastructure company Indus Tower for a contract, potentially in the range of $500-600 million (Rs 2,430-2,916 crore).

Sources close to the development confirmed the tower infrastructure company had been evaluating IT services vendors. “So far, Wipro, Infosys and IBM have responded to the request for proposals (RFPs). The contract will be for eight to 10 years,” said a senior executive of a company familiar with the details.

Indus Tower is a joint venture between Bharti Group, Idea Cellular and Vodafone Essar. It owns 110,000 towers and has operations in 16 of the 22 telecom circles.

Indus Towers is looking for a partner to provide end-to-end IT solutions. This will cover areas such as infrastructure management, application development and other related managed services.

“Discussions are on. They are looking at several options. They are yet to decide whether they want to go in for a complete end-to-end outsourcing deal or go in for infrastructure outsourcing and even application development maintenance services. Or, go in a phased manner,” said another senior executive in the know.

Emails to Indus Tower and Wipro did not elicit any response. When contacted, a Infosys spokesperson said, “We do not comment on market speculation.”

Analysts tracking the industry said if the deal goes through, it will yet again set industry standards. “Like the Bharti-IBM deal, which was a trend-setter, this deal, too, has potential to do that. This will be a significant deal, as Indus is one of the largest players in Indian telecom space,” said Alok Shende, founder director at Ascentius Consulting.

In June, IBM had signed a five-year integrated managed services (IMS) agreement with Viom (earlier known as Quippo-WTTIL), a joint venture between the tower arm of Tata Teleservices and Srei group’s Quippo. While financial details of the deal were not disclosed, IBM was to provide technical support system to revamp Viom’s IT infrastructure for its operations through India.

IBM in 2009, had also managed to bag Bharti Airtel’s IT requirement for its tower company, Bharti Infratel.

The only other winner of big deals in the Indian telecom space has been Bangalore-based Wipro. In 2009, its India business, Wipro Infotech, had managed to bag a $500-million strategic outsourcing contract from Uninor. Before that, in 2008, Wipro had also managed to bag a $600-million deal from Aircel.

Source:http://www.business-standard.com/india/news/infosys-wipro-ibm-in-fray-for-600-mn-indus-tower-deal-/454740/

IBM-1.50% today announced the opening of a new branch office in Indore, Madhya Pradesh in central India as part of the company’s continued geographic expansion initiative to increase its presence in key growth markets and support its global growth strategy.

The new office is one of IBM’s 15 branches across the country and is part of IBM’s ongoing investment in India covering the creation of new facilities, offices, training and recruitment, sales and marketing and corporate citizenship. IBM currently is focused on increasing its presence in smaller cities across the country to meet the growing needs of clients and partners and to establish a footprint in over 40 Indian cities by 2013.

“IBM is a partner to innovative and high-growth companies across India. By strengthening our presence in the Madhya Pradesh region we are able to offer the most advanced technologies and solutions to our local partners and clients – helping them to do things smarter and break away from the rest of the pack,” said Nipun Mehrotra, Vice President, General Business and Geographic Expansion, IBM India/South Asia.

IBM is engaged with clients and partners across multiple industries in the region such as automotive, pharmaceutical, food production, software development, retail, textile and public sector. IBM’s customers in the region include food manufacturers Sonic Biochem and Everfresh Bakeries as well as textile manufacturing company Pratibha Syntex.

IBM’s partnership with Sonic Biochem Extractions – an important manufacturer and exporter of soya products – includes a 10-year outsourcing contract under which IBM is responsible for the hosting and management of Sonic Biochem’s entire IT infrastructure including servers, storage, network equipment and security solutions.

“IBM has been instrumental in our business transformation – improving our agility, increasing the visibility of data and enabling our business leaders to make better and faster decisions,” said Kamal Matta, Chief Technology Officer at Sonic Biochem.

With the new office in Indore, IBM is strengthening its ability to deliver more advanced and high-value solutions such as information management, security and networking, cloud computing, business analytics, strategic outsourcing and hosting services. By working with its business partners in the region, IBM is also able to offer many express offerings tailored to the emerging enterprise segment.

Source:http://www.marketwatch.com/story/ibm-continues-india-expansion-with-new-office-in-indore-madhya-pradesh-2011-10-31

IBM’s new chief executive officer Virginia Rometty has a huge task ahead of her overhauling the company’s IT outsourcing model as it shifts towards a pay-as-you-go cloud computing model. Speaking at the Best of Breed conference in California at the start of this week, vice president of outsourcing and offshore services for IDC David Tapper claimed that IBM has a mammoth task on its hands.

“IBM is dealing with a huge set of challenges,” he was reported by CRN as saying. Mr Tapper added that system integration is quickly becoming a core aspect of service delivery – particularly as software-as-a-service (SaaS) becomes much more widespread.

Mr Tapper concluded: “My belief is IBM has to build a distinct business unit like a cloud unit that pulls it all together and moves the old business model to the new business model.”

Recently, IBM’s vice president of cloud services Ric Telford claimed that platform-as-a-service and its associated technologies were no longer about cost savings alone. He told V3 that migration to the cloud offers an entirely new paradigm for the development and deployment of applications.

Source:http://hosting.onestopclick.com/technology_news/ibm-will-need-to-drastically-alter-cloud-outsourcing-model_800776250.htm

IBM has renewed its strategic information technology outsourcing agreement with full service bank Westpac New Zealand for a further five years, CBR Online reports.

The responsibility of Westpac’s IT infrastructure services, including mainframes and midrange systems, storage, security, data centre raised floor services, data centre network services, workplace services, and workplace printing will be taken by IBM.

As per the new contract, IBM will deploy new technologies to improve customer service and sustainability, and upgrade existing systems, BBR states.

IBM said it would also provide a range of advanced technologies, which, together with the existing environment, will create additional synergies, flexibility and choice for users.

Westpac GM, customer and technology services, Jim Stabback said Westpac is pleased to renew what has proved to be a successful and constructive long-term relationship. It supports the bank’s strategy of making it easier and faster, and providing an experience that delights its customers.

According to MenaFN, financial details of the new agreement were not disclosed. Also, new IBM z196 mainframes will provide greater resilience and increased capacity to support Westpac’s continued growth, while virtualised midrange servers and storage solutions will reduce CPU power demands and the overall data centre footprint. In addition, enhanced security and data centre network technology will continue to ensure a highly secure and resilient network.

The deployment of the IBM technology will support the low-risk transformation to new data centre facilities.

Source:http://www.itweb.co.za/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=48347:ibm-renews-westpac-outsourcing-agreement&catid=69

IBM IBM +1.99% today announced that Westpac New Zealand has renewed its strategic information technology (IT) outsourcing agreement for a further five years to 2017. Under the new contract, which expands on an agreement first signed in 2000, IBM will deploy new technologies to improve customer service and sustainability, and upgrade existing systems.

IBM has prime responsibility for Westpac’s key IT infrastructure services, including mainframes and midrange systems, storage, security, data center raised floor services, data center network services, workplace services, and workplace printing.

Under the new agreement, IBM will provide a range of advanced technologies which, together with the existing environment, will create additional synergies, flexibility and choice for users. New IBM z196 mainframes will provide greater resilience and increased capacity to support Westpac’s continued growth while virtualized midrange servers and storage solutions will reduce CPU power demands and overall data center footprint. In addition, enhanced security and data center network technology will continue to ensure a highly secure and resilient network. The deployment of the IBM technology will support the low risk transformation to new data center facilities.

The new IBM agreement represents a solution that underpins the Westpac NZ IT strategy providing a robust and resilient platform for the future, including an upgrade of the underlying IT Infrastructure. It provides the upgrade path for Westpac’s workplace environment, ensuring the latest technology is deployed and there is a migration path to the latest operating systems. New automation tools for provisioning and managing the overall IT environment will be implemented, improving the time to market for new IT solutions in the Bank as well as ensuring the systems remain stable and secure.

The agreement, signed in September 2011, supports the Bank’s technology transformation program and will deliver greater consistency across Westpac NZ vendors and the Westpac Group.

“Westpac is pleased to renew what has proved to be a successful and constructive long term relationship. It supports the Bank’s strategy of making it easier and faster and providing an experience that delights our customers,” said Jim Stabback, General Manager Customer& Technology Services, Westpac.

“The new agreement builds on our mutual experience since 2000 and will lead to an even closer alignment of IT services with the needs of Westpac’s employees and customers as our collective team works together to deliver on the bank’s IT vision,” said Andrew Fox, General Manager, Global Technical Services, IBM New Zealand. “The ongoing investment by Westpac in advanced technologies will positively differentiate its brand in many ways such as higher energy savings and improved customer service.”

Today’s announcement with Westpac is another example of how IBM Global Services teams with its clients to solve business problems and help them capitalize on new opportunities. Clients today are looking to IT service providers for more than just cost cutting. Global clients need help finding ways to better leverage IT into their business to stimulate growth and prepare for the future. By tightly weaving together business insights, an industry-leading software portfolio, world-class technology research and operations expertise, IBM is redefining what it means to design, deploy and deliver IT services on a global scale. As a result, IBM Global Services clients achieve faster return on investment while freeing up resources to focus on innovative projects.

Source:http://www.marketwatch.com/story/westpac-new-zealand-and-ibm-sign-five-year-services-deal-2011-10-14

Westpac New Zealand has renewed its IT outsourcing agreement with IBM which will see new technologies deployed and existing system upgrades.

The agreement was first signed in 2000 and was renewed in 2006, Westpac spokesman Chris Miriams said.

Mr Miriams said the value of the contract with IBM was not something Westpac discussed publicly.

IBM is responsible for Westpac’s IT infrastructure services including mainframes and midrange systems, storage, security, data centre network services and workplace printing.

IBM New Zealand global technical services general manager Andrew Fox said Westpac’s data centre services were currently hosted in a Gen-I facility and not IBM’s $80 million Auckland centre, launched this year. Mr Fox said these services would be operated and managed by IBM.

He said part of the deal, signed in September, was a transformational aspect which involved replacing some of the bank’s old systems and platforms with new ones that were more energy efficient.

“More bang for your watt, in terms of energy and obviously part of that is virtualizing lots and lots of existing systems onto fewer new ones.”

Mr Fox said virtualizing involved running multiple systems, which would previously have taken several servers, on one more powerful and energy efficient server.

He said this was cheaper for the client in terms of power and hardware.

Mr Fox said two z196 mainframes, IBM’s latest mainframe technology, would be installed.

Mr Fox said the new agreement would bring enhanced security and network technology to the existing IT infrastructure and help the bank get to where it wanted to go in the future.

A release from IBM said new automation tools for provisioning and managing the IT environment would be implemented, improving the time to market for new IT solutions in the bank.

Mr Fox said IBM was unable to give the value of the deal.

“As you’ll imagine from the size of the bank and the scope of the work that we’re doing for them it’s significant for us and for them.”

Westpac customer and technology services general manager Jim Stabback said the bank was pleased to renew that had proved to be a successful and constructive long term relationship.

“It supports the Bank’s strategy of making it easier and faster and providing an experience that delights our customers.”

Source:http://www.nbr.co.nz/article/westpac-nz-renews-five-year-it-services-agreement-ibm-aw-102326

IBM has won a contract likely to be well over $100 million to support Westpac New Zealand’s information technology systems for a further five years.

The agreement includes the supply of two new mainframe computers, which will be hosted in a data centre owned by Telecom’s Gen-i.

Westpac first outsourced its systems to IBM in 2000 as part of a massive US$2.3 billion (NZ$2.9b) 10-year outsourcing deal between its Australian parent, IBM and Telstra in which about 130 New Zealand bank staff transferred to IBM. That contract was rejigged in 2006 when a new Reserve Bank policy on outsourcing forced Westpac New Zealand to begin contracting directly IBM.

Westpac in Australia renewed its contract with IBM for another five years last November.

Westpac New Zealand’s transformation services head, Nathan Richardson, said the annualised value of the contract would not change significantly. The new contract set out the quality of the services IBM had to supply to Westpac in terms that were more relevant to the bank, he said.

IBM sales director Warren Brown said the agreement would give Westpac access to new technology, which would let it run fewer servers using less power and make its systems more robust.

The new z196 mainframes would provide more capacity that would allow the bank to expand, he said.

Source:http://www.stuff.co.nz/business/5769672/IBM-signed-up-again-by-bank

I wrote a news story recently following a report from Deutsche Bank sent to me by a reader.

The report was the result of interviews carried out with four of Europe’s top ten banks. The research was carried out by the German bank and management consultancy group Value Leadership Group.

It said that the big banks want to increase the proportion of work done offshore but incumbent suppliers most notably Accenture and IBM are not playing ball. IBM and Accenture have huge workforces in India but the banks are saying that they are moving more of the work onshore. This is adding cost for the customer.

“Most banks we polled complained that despite the service agreements, during the last financial year [multinational] firms like Accenture and IBM saw resource issues offshore and used a greater proportion of their onsite headcount while executing application development projects,” said the report.

These service providers seem to be playing a risky game and the research revealed that the big Indian suppliers such as TCS and HCL are taking business from some incumbents.

For example HCL and TCS recently won sizable deals with Deutsche Bank itself. The HCL deal, which is for five years, will transform the support of Deutsche Bank’s core applications with a service that will meet ITIL and LEAN global standards. Although no value was announced for the deal a source told me it is £300m. Then TCS won a deal with Deutsche Bank to transform IT support in its investment arm.

If this is right it would seem shocking that the Western multi-national suppliers would risk losing deals with big banks. It seems some suppliers haven’t learnt from their mistakes of the past.

I met up with one of the pioneers of Indian IT services last year. Ashok Soota was the executive chairman of tier-two Indian service provider MindTree when I spoke to him last year. He is better known for being the president of Wipro in the 80s and to late 90s. When Soota was at the top of IT India some of the senior executives of the big Indian players today were out in the field.

He said the reason the Indian suppliers became such big players in the IT outsourcing sector was because they took their eyes off the ball.

I think it is interesting to republish what he said back then given the trend revealed by Deutsche bank and Value Leadership Group.

“The suppliers in the West only started to feel threatened by us in 2000.”

“Before 1994 Western IT companies were not really noticing us because we were mainframe maintenance.”

“Then client/server came and they thought we could not do it. But we were.”

“Then Y2K came along (millennium bug) and they thought we would go away afterwards. But Y2K gave Indian companies entry into big global companies.”

“Then they did not think internet work could be done offshore, because of the need for a quick turnaround. But distance can be an advantage because you can work around the clock.”

“The internet reduced transaction costs. Before this big players had dedicated pipelines. Now it became possible for a mid sized company to communicate with a mid sized company.”

“It was 2004 by the time the big Western suppliers became anxious.”

So what did they do? Well obviously they all moved to India.

So could the mistakes be being repeated? I mean banks are pretty important customers so you don’t want to be losing too much business.

It might start with low cost services around application management and IT support but if the banks and Indian suppliers bolster their relationships there will probably be much more on offer.

Source:http://www.computerweekly.com/blogs/inside-outsourcing/2011/10/are-western-it-services-providers-letting-the-indians-in-for-a-second-time-or-is-it-just-ibm-and-acc.html

Chetan Dube, a former associate professor of mathematics at New York University, thinks he can teach IT services providers a lesson. Using artificial intelligence and humanoids, he is revolutionising the way computer networks are managed and making the low-cost business model of Infosys, Wipro and IBM look like relics of the past.

Dube, 42, and his company IPSoft operate in the area of IT infrastructure management, a fast-growing and lucrative part of the outsourcing business that Indian companies are keen to make deep inroads into. IPSoft stands in the way. “The last decade belonged to labour arbitrage; this decade belongs to advanced automation arbitrage,” Dube told ET in a telephone interview from New York, where IPSoft is headquartered.

A testament to this claim is the fact that IPSoft employs only 1,400 people for revenues of $700 million (Rs 3,400 crore). In comparison, Indian IT services companies typically employ at least 15,000 staff for each $1 billion in revenue.

IPSoft, founded in 1998 by Dube and his colleagues from New York University, pulls this off by relying heavily on expert systems that mimic the human brain. They are capable of self-healing, self-learning and autonomously solving a majority of the problems that arise on computer networks. And IPSoft’s correlation engines do what the human brain just cannot: pick trends by analysing hundreds of pieces of information all at once to diagnose and solve problems. Nearly two-thirds of all problems on computer networks are being solved by IPSoft with no human intervention at all, said Dube who studied electrical engineering at IIT Delhi.

The global market for managing computer servers, desktops and communication networks is worth around $25 billion at present and expected to grow to $45 billion in the next four years, according to research firm Gartner.
India’s export of remote infrastructure management services was worth $4.3 billion in 2010 and the segment employed nearly 1 lakh people, data from Nasscom show.

Humanoid Vs Humans

Humanoid Eliza can identify problems, have natural conversations with users and solve them in few seconds compared with a few hours taken by human engineers

At current rate, IPSoft will reach a billion dollar in revenues with just 2000 staff while Indian outsourcing fi rms typically employ at least 15000 staff for every billion dollar in revenues

What’s at Stake

$25 billion

Current global market for IT infrastructure management

$45billion Likely size of this market in the next four years

Business can Grow Seven-fold by 2020

The software industry grouping estimates that by 2020, this business can grow seven-fold and contribute to more than a third of the total IT services revenues for India. For Wipro and HCL, the remote infrastructure management business makes up about a fifth of revenue. And all this is in IPSoft’s domain. Indian tech firms and multinational companies such as IBM and HP have been developing common platforms to serve multiple customers with fewer staff. But none of them, analysts say, have made any significant progress in bringing real automation and intelligence to machines that move away from people-based support systems.

Eric Goodness of Gartner said Indian and other outsourcing vendors’ view of automation is confined to just the workflow and not true services automation where there is no human intervention. “When you have a hammer, everything looks like a nail,” the Boston-based analyst said. “During my visit (to India), automation has been the centre point of discussions and there were some uncomfortable pauses I noticed in Indian boardrooms.”

Over the past few months, companies such as ING, Morgan Stanley and BT have shifted an increasing proportion of their IT management projects to IPSoft. At ING, the biggest Dutch financial services firm, IPSoft replaced TCS engineers with its platform to manage the trading desk across nine central European countries. Within the last year, IPSoft has acquired 500 customers. “Ninety-two per cent of the opportunities we have walked into, we have won,” Dube said.

Source:http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/tech/ites/using-humanoids-ipsoft-making-the-low-cost-business-model-of-infosys-wipro-and-ibm-look-like-relics-of-the-past/articleshow/10084453.cms

Indiana’s legal bill in its lawsuit with IBM Corp. over a canceled welfare outsourcing contract could grow by more than half its original value, topping $8 million by the end of next June, state documents reveal.

Critics of the administration of Republican Gov. Mitch Daniels criticized the growing costs Tuesday while his press secretary and a spokesman for welfare administrators defended them.

The Family and Social Services Administration will pay as pay as much as $8.05 million through June 30 to the well-connected Indianapolis law firm of Barnes & Thornburg to represent it in the lawsuit with IBM under an amended contract approved Aug. 30 by the attorney general’s office. The original contract approved a year ago paid the firm $5.25 million over the same length of time

The firm’s attorneys on the case include longtime Republican activist Peter Rusthoven and Brian Burdick, the brother of Daniels’ deputy chief of staff, Betsy Burdick.

Indiana House Minority Leader Patrick Bauer, D-South Bend, called the higher costs “wasted money, good money after bad.”

“You wonder how many teachers got dismissed because of that $8 million, how many children didn’t get health care because of that $8 million,” Bauer said, referring to budget cuts the Daniels administration has made.

FSSA sued IBM to recover more than $400 million it paid before Daniels canceled the 10-year, $1.37 billion contract in 2009 amid complaints about the automated welfare system IBM had installed. The Armonk, N.Y.-based technology giant countersued for about $100 million for costs including computer equipment it claims the state has held onto.

Indiana Senate Minority Leader Vi Simpson, D-Bloomington, noted the contract amendment runs through only the current state fiscal year and that the costs could grow ever further at a time when FSSA is cutting services.

“When we’re spending $8 million or $10 million or $15 million or whatever this lawsuit will end up costing us … it seems to me that this if frivolous,” Simpson said.

The contract’s original terms called for FSSA to pay Barnes & Thornburg $5.25 million over the course of three state fiscal years ending June 30, 2012, but the amended terms show the agency paying $5.25 million through June 30, 2011, and the additional $2.8 million during the current state fiscal year that began July 1.

FSSA spokesman Neal Moore said IBM “is doing all it can to run up the costs in hopes the state will give up.”

“At IBM’s behest, electronic discovery has been massive and depositions extensive. It’s a tribute to containment efforts that costs are not more. The trial date is set and the state is not seeking to delay it,” Moore said.

IBM spokesman Clint Roswell said it was the state’s attorneys dragging the case. IBM wanted to go to trial next month but state wanted to wait until mid-April or early May. The trial expected to last three weeks currently is set to begin early next year in Marion Superior Court in Indianapolis.

“We hope that the State is indeed ready to go to trial as expeditiously as possible,” Roswell said in an e-mail message.

In a development earlier this month, IBM’s attorneys renewed their request to depose Daniels, a move Rusthoven said was “meritless.” Judge David Dreyer ruled in April that Daniels need not testify then, but left open the possibility he might be ordered to later.

Rusthoven is billing the state $475 per hour, Burdick is charging $405 per hour, and John Maley, a third attorney, is charging $465 per hour.

“This is a sweetheart deal from the get-go, and it just got sweeter for Barnes & Thornburg,” said Julia Vaughn, policy director for the government watchdog group Common Cause/Indiana. “It’s disappointing that they’ve come back to the public trough.”

Daniels’ press secretary Jane Jankowski, defended the administration’s use of the firm.

“They’re among the best in the business, and if there had been a conflict, the firm would not have been selected,” Jankowski said.

Barnes & Thornburg spokesman Ty Gerig said the firm would have no comment on the contract.

Source:http://www.businessweek.com/ap/financialnews/D9PSFH2O1.htm

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