Rancho Bernardo-Glassman Recreation Center users now have five additional hours per week to be inside the facility.

Starting June 4, Rancho Bernardo Library patrons will also gain five additional hours a week when the branch library is once again open on Monday afternoons.

The extra hours are due to a $16.5 million surplus this year and a projected $119 million surplus over the next five years, according to Mayor Jerry Sanders.

“This year’s $16.5 million budget surplus was a result of my economic reforms, as well as better than expected revenues,” Sanders wrote in an email to constituents on Friday.

“Managed competition, the streamlining of nearly every city department, IT outsourcing and other reforms have collectively produced millions of dollars in budget savings.”

Recreation center hours citywide were cut several years ago to 40 hours per week. Now, the 56 centers will each be open 45 hours per week. Sanders said adding hours to the centers “represents another step toward our fiscal recovery.”

In Rancho Bernardo, the center at 18448 W. Bernardo Drive is now opening one hour earlier and closing one hour later on Tuesdays, opening one hour earlier on Wednesdays and Thursdays, and staying open one hour later on Fridays.

The center’s new hours are: noon to 7 p.m. Mondays, 11 a.m. to 9 p.m. Tuesdays, 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. Wednesdays, 11 a.m. to 8 p.m. Thursdays, 2 to 7 p.m. Fridays and 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. Saturdays.

For new hours at other city recreation centers, including Carmel Mountain Ranch/Sabre Springs, and those in Rancho Penasquitos, go to www.sandiego.gov/park-and-recreation/centers/.

As for the new library hours, those go into effect on Monday, June 4, when the city’s 35 branch libraries will be open from 12:30-5:30 p.m.

All library branches lost their Monday hours and several — like Rancho Bernardo — also lost their Sunday hours in March 2010 when the city cut $3.8 million from the library budget. That year, the city faced a $179 million deficit for fiscal year 2011.

In Rancho Bernardo, the library went from being open 45 hours a week to 36 hours. In Carmel Mountain Ranch and Rancho Penasquitos the library branches went from 41 to 36 hours since neither was open on Sundays.

The new funding announced by Sanders is not enough to restore Sunday hours at the branches that had them nor the Saturday hours eliminated at the Central Library in 2010 in order to keep the branch libraries open five days a week for the past two years.

All city branch libraries will have the following schedule as of June 4: 12:30 to 5:30 p.m. Mondays, 12:30 to 8 p.m. Tuesdays and Wednesdays, 9:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. Thursdays and Fridays, and 9:30 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. Saturdays.

Sanders said restoring some hours cut from the city’s recreation centers and branch libraries was among his priorities as soon as the city experienced a budget surplus.

“While San Diego has come a long way over the past few years, we’re not done yet,” Sanders wrote. “We’re going to keep at it until the very last day — reforming, retooling and restoring city services. These expanded operating hours are a sign that we’re on the right track.”

Source:http://www.pomeradonews.com/2012/05/17/rancho-bernardo-rec-center-library-extend-hours/

Mahindra Satyam today reported a net profit of Rs 534.21 crore for the fourth quarter ended 31 March 2012, driven largely by higher revenues and increased employee efficiency rates.

The city-based company had suffered a net loss of Rs 327 crore in the January-March period of 2011.

The company’s consolidated revenues during the quarter grew at 21 per cent to Rs 1,666 crore as compared to Rs 1,375 crore for the same period last fiscal.

Vineet Nayyar, chief executive of Tech Mahindra. Reuters

“This quarter we had a benefit of 1.3 percent on currency rate. The growth was largely volume driven. Efficiency levels are also pretty significant in this quarter,” Mahindra Satyam CFO Vasant Krishnan said.

On the outlook for the current fiscal, company’s chairman Vineet Nayyar said though the global economic situation appears to be bleak at this point of time, the company would try to maintain the current level of growth.

“Economic prognosis at this point time is uncertain. There are large numbers of contradictions in Europe. This is going to have an impact on business, especially on spend. And I also said normally whenever affluent countries come under pressure and need to economise, they do turn to suppliers like us,” he said.

With larger peers like Infosys and Wipro giving muted guidance lower than Nasscom’s guidance, while Cognizant slashed its annual revenue forecast, there are concerns about the health of the Indian IT outsourcing industry.

Industry body Nasscom has forecast the sector’s growth at 11-14 percent for this fiscal.

Exuding confidence in the company’s capabilities, Nayyar said, “There are forces at work and it is our hope, not promise, that we will be able to continue with the current level of growth.”

For the full year ended 31 March 2012, Mahindra Satyam has registered a net profit of Rs 1,306 crore as against a loss of Rs 147 crore in 2010-11.

Revenues in the reported fiscal stood at Rs 6,395.6 crore, up 24.3 percent from Rs 5,145.1 crore in FY’11.

Satyam Computer Services came at the centre of a massive accounting fraud perpetrated by its founder chairman B Ramalinga Raju in 2009. The firm, which was later taken over by Tech Mahindra, has since been rebranded as Mahindra Satyam.

According to Nayyar, the company has fully recovered from all the issues and the results establish that.

“The not so good news is now we do not have alibi, the management is required to deliver quarter to quarter because we cannot take the excuse anymore,” Nayyar added.

On employee metrics, Krishnan said Mahindra Satyam has added 1,073 people in the quarter at the foot level, which has helped talent expansion significantly.

“In this quarter, we have added 1,073 employees at the base of the pyramid. And that again resulted in talent expansion of 32.7 percent at the base,” he said.

Source:http://www.firstpost.com/business/mahindra-satyam-q4-profit-at-rs-534-cr-on-higher-revenues-312876.html

About 1.6 million youths will enter Tunisia’s labor force over the next decade and private education providers could help many of these young people find rewarding, well-paying jobs, according to a new study by IFC, a member of the World Bank Group.

With youth unemployment at 27 percent, private colleges and trade schools could equip graduates with the skills they need to find work in several fast-growing fields, including IT outsourcing, construction, real estate, tourism and electronics. The study found the private sector could complement public efforts to provide Tunisia’s youth with the training to excel in a rapidly-changing labor market, where over 40 percent of post-secondary graduates are unemployed.

“In some sectors of the economy, we see a mismatch between education programs and the demands of the labor market,” said Dahlia Khalifa, the head of IFC’s e4e Initiative for Arab Youth. “This study found that private post-secondary schools can provide students with the practical skills they need to find work, boosting employment and stoking economic development in Tunisia.”

The study was done as part of the e4e initiative, launched by IFC and the Islamic Development bank in 2010 to address the challenge of youth unemployment in the Arab world by promoting private-sector education.

Recent data show that about 25 percent of youth in the Middle East and North Africa are unemployed, amongst the highest rate globally, costing the region nearly $50 billion a year.

IFC is holding a stakeholder consultation workshop at Tunisia’s Concorde Les Berges du Lac hotel on May 17 to discuss the results of the study and develop an action plan to improve the employability of Tunisia youth over the short and medium term. The workshop includes members of the government, employers and youth along with both private and public sector educators.

Source:http://allafrica.com/stories/201205170717.html

Outsourcing is pretty much de rigueur for modern startups looking to conserve capital. But making outsourcing work for your startup isn’t always easy. One of the first steps is figuring out where to outsource.

There are a lot of choices. The first major decision is geographical. Should you outsource locally, nationally or internationally?

My company, GrowBiz Media, has outsourced Web design and development, both internationally and locally. Believe me when I tell you each comes with its own set of pros and cons.

Here’s a quick overview:

Outsourcing Internationally

When most people think of outsourcing, they envision coders in Southeast Asia working into the wee hours of (our) night. Turns out that many factors can make global outsourcing more difficult and expensive than it appears to be at first glance.

Pros: Low cost is the primary reason most companies outsource overseas. The time difference can also be a plus: You can send your changes to your team at the end of your business day, and have the code ready when you wake up the next morning.

Cons: The old adage “you get what you pay for” often holds true. Managing people thousands of miles away is difficult at best, so when calculating costs, consider that you may need to pay someone to oversee your overseas contractors. Language or cultural barriers can add to the complexity, and different time zones can cause as many problems as they solve.

Outsourcing Nationally

Outsourcing IT within the U.S. is gaining steam. Often called rural sourcing or near-sourcing, the movement is driven partly by companies’ dissatisfaction with the quality of overseas workers and partly by a desire to bring jobs back to the U.S.

The International Association of Outsourcing Professionals named near-sourcing one of its top trends for 2012. In places like Georgia, North Carolina and Arkansas, skilled tech workers can be found for a fraction of what you’d pay in Silicon Valley or New York, according to Rural Sourcing Inc., which matches companies with workers in “second- and third-tier” cities nationwide.

Pros: Lack of cultural and language barriers make communicating with U.S. workers easier and more convenient. The time zone differential may be a slight benefit, depending on where your business and your contractors are located.

Cons: You’ll pay more for outsourcing within America than you would overseas, and if your outsourced team is across the country, meeting in person will still take time, effort and money. Be aware that some American contractors will subcontract some or all of your projects to overseas workers. This can be fine, particularly if they’re familiar with them and their work. But when this happened with one contractor we dealt with, the results were not positive.

Outsourcing Locally

After our negative experiences with outsourcing overseas, GrowBiz Media turned to a local Southern California business when it came time to rebuild our SmallBizDaily.com website.

Pros: Face time is the major advantage of working with a local company. While most of our communication still takes place by email and conference calls, when we undertake big projects or major changes, we can meet in person to brainstorm ideas and sketch out plans. Another advantage: If you do end up hiring full-time in the future, good contractors often turn into good employees.

Cons: By outsourcing to workers in your area, you’ll have to pay the going rate – which can wipe out most of the cost benefits. As with national contractors, some local firms may outsource all or part of your work overseas.

Key Questions

Since all three options come with pros and cons, how do you decide what’s best for your situation? Consider these issues:

Timeliness: Is this a rush project that simply can’t be late? If deadlines are essential, having the team accountable and close at hand could trump all other considerations.

Complexity: A simple project that doesn’t require much direction, has some “wiggle” time built into the schedule and has a bit of room for error may be most economically handled by an overseas team.

Personality: If you don’t have a problem with a more impersonal relationship with your team, overseas contractors could be fine for you. But if you’re a people person who needs face-to-face interaction, you may want to stick with local, or perhaps national, contractors.

Source:http://www.readwriteweb.com/start/2012/05/the-pros-and-cons-of-it-outsourcing-globally-nationally-and-locally.php

Emerging-market investors seem to get hit by trouble near and far. They suffer when euro zone troubles erode investment confidence generally. But they also have their own particular concerns about a slowing China and an intensification of resource nationalism.

The outperformance of emerging market equities can no longer be taken for granted. Over the last three years, they have lagged developed brethren by about 8 percent. Total returns were only just positive, while developed-market stocks were up a little over 10 percent.

Slow or no-growth European economies reduce demand for emerging-market exports. If Europe’s currency breaks and its banks get crunched, demand for goods and services is almost certain to fall. Thanks to the hard-wired interconnectivity, financial stocks could be hit more directly. And financials make up a greater proportion of market values in the emerging market indexes – 24 percent versus developed markets’ 18 percent.

Now factor in conventional emerging-market worries – breakneck growth ending in a hard landing, and unpredictable governments. China is slowing, resource nationalism has flared up in Argentina. There’s even an acceptance that demand for mineral wealth won’t increase forever. Comments on May 16 from Jacques Nasser, chairman BHP Billiton, the world’s biggest miner, crystallise such fears.

India’s rupee is at an all-time low. Imports have jumped by 38 percent year on-year, driven by the higher cost of oil. There’s still no sign of a competitive exports sector beyond IT outsourcing. The current account deficit is at its highest since 1980, when the International Monetary Fund starting collecting data.

The long-term emerging-market growth story may be too good to ignore. That may explain why the latest Bank of America Merrill Lynch poll of fund managers found that one third of respondents were overweight emerging markets. At 9.6, the forward price earnings ratio is near to a 10-year low. That may seem cheap. But there are good reasons for that. A re-weighting towards developed markets would make sense.

Source:http://blogs.reuters.com/breakingviews/2012/05/17/emerging-markets-hit-by-double-troubles/

Royal Berkshire NHS Foundation Trust has confirmed that it is planning to go live with Cerner Millennium this month, despite the publication of board minutes that reveal concern about its financial position and the management of such a major project.

Concerns follow £5.5m of investment in Millennium, an IT outsourcing contract with CSC, and the new Bracknell Clinic, which provides treatment for cancer and renal patients at a time that the trust is facing a financial deficit. It had initially planned to go-live at the end of March.

Source:http://www.healthcare-today.co.uk/news/royal-berks-to-go-live-with-cerner/21915/