Posts Tagged ‘Outsource’

Nokia Cuts 300 Jobs, Outsources Up To 820 More To HCL And Tata To ‘Align IT With Its Business Focus’

January 17th, 2013

Here’s the cloud to Nokia’s silver lining statement the other day of better than expected handset sales: it is cutting IT 300 jobs, and outsourcing 850 more, with Indian outsourcing giants HCL and Tata Consultancy Services picking up the reigns for the latter. The newswas announced this morning by the company as it gears up to report Q1 results January 24.

Nokia says that these are part of a bigger set of cost reductions that it announced in June 2012. At the time it had announced it would lay of 10,000 people as part of that process.

nokia-logo

Nokia says that these are the final layoffs related to that announcement. But that doesn’t mean that it’s finished cost cutting altogether; there may yet be further cuts as the company continues to reduce costs and downsize to fit the fact that it is no longer the world’s biggest handset maker, and that its device sales have, overall, declined significantly in the last several years. Nokia has in total laid off nearly 16,000 people in its mobile and location division since CEO Stephen Elop took over in 2010; it now has around 44,600 employees working in it.

There are small signs that Nokia is slowing turning things around: on January 10, the company released preliminary Q4 numbers that indicated that it had sold 4.4 million units of its new line of Lumia Windows Phone devices in the quarter, roughly twice the number of smartphones built on its legacy Symbian platform that it has slowly been phasing out of use. But given that the quarter covering Thanksgiving and Christmas is traditionally a strong period for handset makers, Nokia also warned of tough times in Q1 .

While June’s announcement referred to jobs in handset operations in Canada, German and its home market of Finland, today’s round of cuts is around the company’s IT operations, which are now being right-sized to the new remit of the company, Nokia says.

“Nokia believes these changes will increase operational efficiency and reduce operating costs, creating an IT organization appropriate for Nokia’s current size and scope,” the company writes in its statement. The majority of these cuts announced today will be in Finland.

As with those engineers and others that have already been cut from operations like Nokia’s now-outsourced Symbian mobile platform, and its abandoned MeeGo effort, IT employees, it says, will also be eligible for funds from its Bridge program — an incubator Nokia has created specifically for funding laid off workers’ ideas for new businesses. Employees get €25,000 to start, with the possibility of funding up to $185,000.

Source:http://techcrunch.com/2013/01/17/nokia-cuts-300-jobs-outsources-up-to-820-more-to-hcl-and-tata/

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S’pore firms to outsource IT infrastructure

September 20th, 2012

Mr Smith: Security, flexibility, reliability are priorities for the financial sector when it comes to IT outsourcing.

Virtually all – 98 per cent – of Singapore’s IT decision makers will outsource the bulk of their IT infrastructure and move it to the cloud in the next five years, says hosted infrastructure solutions provider Savvis.

The prediction is based on a new study that the company, which is part of the CenturyLink group, commissioned research firm Vanson Bourne to do. And for the study, the latter conducted a survey – the fourth of such so far – of senior corporate IT decision-makers in Singapore, Hong Kong, Japan, the United States, United Kingdom and Germany.

Speaking to BizIT, Mark Smith, Savvis’ managing director for Asia, said Singapore IT leaders’ top three reasons for increasing outsourced infrastructure are: the need to choose operating expenditure over capital expenditure (58 per cent); to eliminate dependence on legacy infrastructures (56 per cent); and to gain transparency and control over cost models (52 per cent).

He said chief information officers (CIOs), who used to focus on minimising costs, now play a more strategic role in creating value for their business.

Although 92 per cent of Singapore respondents in the survey mentioned that the CIO makes the final decision to outsource infrastructure, 94 per cent said the vice-president/director of infrastructure influences the final decision to outsource infrastructure.

“Companies like Savvis can be partners to CIOs by taking charge of activities that they used to concentrate on in the past and allow them to focus resources on activities that provide competitive advantage to the business.

“Additionally, by partnering CIOs, Savvis helps create value for the businesses through improved agility, scalability and productivity. CIOs are beginning to understand that cloud computing helps gain efficiencies throughout the company and increases collaboration across the office.”

The study indicates that Singapore is leading the trend towards IT infrastructure outsourcing.

Organisations that still have most of their IT infrastructure in-house are in the minority (42 per cent) here. Globally, however, they remain in the majority (56 per cent).

Mr Smith said Singapore companies are among the first in the world in cloud adoption – and their willingness to improve and transform the way IT is managed has spurred Savvis to invest here.

The company announced in March the investment of US$100 million (S$122.35 million) in a second data centre (SG2) facility in Singapore.

Savvis will use this 53,000-square-foot facility, including 32,000 sq ft of raised floor space and IT capacity of 3.6 MW of power, to offer a full suite of enterprise-class colocation, managed hosting, cloud computing and network services.

Source:http://www.asiaone.com/A1Business/General%2BNews/Story/A1Story20120917-372015.html

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Fujitsu nabs Perpetual IT outsource deal

September 3rd, 2012

Financial services firm Perpetual has signed a 5-year, $68 million deal with Fujitsu Australia for outsourced IT infrastructure and application services.

About 100 internal IT staff will be affected by the agreement “post full transition”, with only a “small retained IT team focused on governance and vendor management”, Perpetual said (pdf).

An undisclosed number of Perpetual’s IT staff have been offered work with Fujitsu.

“We have worked with Perpetual and they’ve advised us of a number of key personnel that are required, and we’re making those people offers of employment,” Fujitsu NSW general manager of sales Martin Clarke told CRN sister site iTnews.

It was unclear how many would be made redundant.

Perpetual told analysts today that it had adopted a new “take not make” approach to IT systems, and moved to make IT a “more variable cost base”.

The IT outsourcing agreement is to be executed in three stages.

Migration of infrastructure and applications to Fujitsu is to occur in the send half of FY13, with final transition and handover completed by the fourth quarter of that year.

A two-stage IT system simplification program of work is to follow in FY14.

Fujitsu’s Clarke told iTnews that while there would be some “lift-and-shift” of Perpetual’s existing environment into the outsourcer’s data centres, certain platforms had been earmarked for a more immediate transformation.

“As we start running the services there is transformation required of the existing environment,” he said.

“There are some environments that we will transform in situ, before we move them, there’s some which are lift-and-shift and some we’ll actually build a new environment for and sunset the [existing] platform.”

Clarke said Fujitsu “had an idea” which platforms were candidates for in situ transformation, but noted decisions were yet to be finalised.

Perpetual’s data would be migrated either over-the-wire or by being physically moved into the new data centre environment.

The outsourcing agreement followed a “formal evaluation of all … existing IT arrangements” that Perpetual kicked off in the second half of FY12.

Perpetual called a request for proposals to manage its IT infrastructure “including hardware, networks and application software”, it said in financial statements.

Aiming for 2015

The IT outsourcing agreement forms part of Perpetual’s Transformation 2015 strategy, which is primarily aimed at cutting costs.

Perpetual said at the unveiling of Transformation 2015 in June that it would see “around 580″ full-time equivalent roles cut by the end of FY13.

“The initial priority of the Transformation 2015 is to achieve a simpler, leaner and more efficient corporate structure and refocus the company on activities where Perpetual has a substantial competitive advantage,” CEO Geoff Lloyd said at the time.

The Fujitsu deal did not appear to be the end of outsourcing under Transformation 2015.

“The Group is also reviewing options to outsource its unit registry operations,” Perpetual said.

Source:http://www.crn.com.au/News/313915,fujitsu-nabs-perpetual-it-outsource-deal.aspx

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Busy students outsource homework

January 3rd, 2012

While parents struggle to pay annual school fees between Rs 12,000 and 18,000, a south Mumbai family outsourced a single Std X project for Rs 26,000.

The cost of outsourcing projects has skyrocketed over the years. Regular project work is now compelling parents to send their children for tutorials, giving rise to a new cottage industry.

Meenakshi Chirawawala, a professional who compiles school projects, charged a student Rs 26,000 for an assignment recently. “The student was one of the top scorers in his class and wanted to secure top marks in the assignment. His mother, a resident of Altamount Road, just asked me to spruce up the task. I not only researched into the topics given to students, but also included a lot of craftwork.” she said.

The task of embellishing the project work involves making it more colourful; the use of various types of inks and papers increases its cost, say experts. Moreover, parents demand that the professionals make the “best project”. Atit Shah, an engineering student who coaches students in preparing projects, said, “I charge Rs 5,000 a month for nearly 10 sessions. Students have to complete projects in every subject, therefore, parents are seeking professional help to train them. We guide students in compiling matter and different forms of presentation.”

Shah’s services as a “project assistant” are listed in business directories. With all the education boards earmarking 20 marks in each subject for internal projects, the demand for good project work guides has gone up. “Currently, students have to secure a minimum score of 90% to get admission into any of the toprung city colleges. Students in Std X also unable to meet the submission deadlines with greater emphasis on studies. Parents want wards to bag top scores and leave no stone unturned,” Chirawawala added. For a parent of a Std X boy, the money spent on projects has become an integral part of their monthly budget. A parent of a child who studies in an ICSE school said, “Students have to complete assignments throughout the academic year. We end up spending between Rs 7,000 and Rs 15,000 per month. Students do not have the time to work on these projects ahead of the board exam. We treat the money spent on outsourcing project work as tuition expenses.”

The project work involves research and then summarising the findings. Once the guide has finished the assignment, students have to merely write it in their handwriting. A school told students to visit nationalised, private and foreign banks and then asked them to compare the fixed deposit interest rates. The guides ensured that different projects are compiled on the topic for submission.

Source:http://educationtimes.com/educationTimes/CMSD/Newsroom/1/2012010320120103134347609c39e6a93/Busy-students-outsource-homework.html

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CSC to Outsource IT for 11 BAE Businesses on Potential $800M Deal

November 23rd, 2011

Computer Sciences Corp. (NYSE: CSC) has signed an agreement with BAE Systems worth up to $160 million per year for five years to provide information technology outsourcing services.

The agreement replaces an existing arrangement set to expire April 2012 and calls for CSC to provide end user computing and mainframe services, networking and storage support and application maintenance.

“As the defense industry continues to evolve, CSC’s expertise and support in delivering highly competitive, value for money services across our business in support of our strategic and operational objectives will be invaluable,” Dean McCumiskey, BAE Systems global chief information officer, said of the recent agreement.

CSC’s IT services will span 11 BAE Systems businesses, located in the U.K., Sweden and Saudi Arabia. The companies’ relationship began in 1994 with the signing if a 10-year IT outsourcing contract in the U.K.

Source:http://www.govconwire.com/2011/11/csc-bae-build-relationship-with-potential-800m-it-outsourcing-deal/

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ABTO Software Announces its New Slogan “Accelerate Business Today – Outsource to ABTO!”

November 18th, 2011

ABTO Software (www.abtosoftware.com), a global provider of offshore IT outsourcing and high-end software development services, officially announces its new slogan “Accelerate Business Today – Outsource to ABTO!”

The familiar slogan: “We’ll scope it and build it; we’ll update and then take care of it. Solutions with integrity.” has been ABTO’s slogan since 2007, but with the course of time the company has grown, evolved and felt the need to become more visible on the global IT outsourcing services market.

This new slogan summarizes the company’s core values, reflects its corporate strategy and reveals its mission to the world. It clearly manifests that ABTO Software is aimed at helping its customers accelerate their business by providing high quality outsourcing services in a variety of areas like Custom Software Development, Mobile Solutions Secure Software, Web Design and Development, etc. and across such diverse vertical markets as Banking & Finance, Healthcare, Government, Retail & Distribution, etc (new.abtosoftware.com/category/portfolio/) .

ABTO’s goal has always been to remain a trusted provider of advanced software solutions for customers around the globe. Since its setting up ABTO Software has grown significantly. Now it employs over 60 professional software developers to catch up with the growing customers’ demands. Our software and web development experts all have Master or Bachelor’s degrees in Software Engineering and Computer Sciences, which allows them to leverage various state-of-the-art technologies to create high class IT solutions that ultimately help ABTO’s customers grow, accelerate and succeed in the highly-competitive global economy.

ABTO’s team of bright dedicated software developers using innovative technologies has recently been working on a major makeover of the company’s website to better reveal the new company’s slogan concept. The new slogan vividly displayed on the updated ABTO’s website is addressed to the company’s current and prospective customers and aimed at promoting the company as a reliable software outsourcing partner.

Oleksandr Muzychuk, the CEO at ABTO Software, notes: “ABTO Software’s uniqueness lays in its flexibility and total commitment to specific customer’s needs. So, our new slogan is designed to emphasize that our prospective clients can rely on ABTO Software as a partner aimed at our customers’ business workflows optimization, and as a result increase of their competitive advantage. We are striving for long-term mutually beneficial cooperation with our valued customers, which is sure to bring unrivaled value to their business.”
Keywords: ABTO Software, IT outsourcing services, software development services, custom software development, software developers, software outsourcing.

Source:http://www.openpr.com/news/201009/ABTO-Software-Announces-its-New-Slogan-Accelerate-Business-Today-Outsource-to-ABTO.html

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How To Outsource Assignments, Tasks To Free Up Time

October 31st, 2011

Time is valuable. For some, it is more valuable than anything else. If you run a business like I do, you will encounter tasks that need to be done but waste lots of precious time. A basic example would be comment moderating, checking for broken links or answering emails. While it is not always possible to outsource those tasks, especially not so if you do not want to provide a third party access to the data, there are other tasks that can be easily outsourced to free up time.

When I say outsource I mean to hire a third party to perform that task for you. And this can be anything that you are comfortable to share. From homework assignments to creating a new website, writing an article or converting documents. Outsourcing on the Internet works best for tasks that are technology related, even though they are not limited to that.

Lets take a look at one of the marketplaces where you can outsource your tasks. Fiverr on first glance does not look like a place where any sane person would outsource tasks on. You pay $5 regardless of the task which, depending on the task, feels awfully low. I’d suggest to use the search first to find suitable providers. Lets say you are looking to get your math assignment done. Enter math, or something more specific like algebra or geometry in the search form and look at the results.

Source:http://www.ghacks.net/2011/10/31/how-to-outsource-assignments-tasks-to-free-up-time/

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