Accent Computer Solutions Inc., an information technology service provider, has achieved Gold Desktop and Server Platform Competencies in the Microsoft Partner Network, establishing its ability to meet Microsoft customers’ needs in today’s ever-changing business environment. To earn a Microsoft Gold Competency, organizations must complete a formidable set of tests to prove their level of technology expertise; employ a sufficient number of Microsoft Certified Professionals; submit consumer references; and show their commitment to customer satisfaction by participating in an annual survey.

One of the largest IT service providers in Southern California, Accent Computer Solutions provides clients with user support, strategic technology planning and consulting, systems maintenance and security, monitoring services, problem isolation and resolution, and backup- and disaster-recovery support. Founded in 1987, the company focuses on reducing the cost and risk of utilizing information technology by offering IT services, IT outsourcing, network services, cloud computing, new building and remodel cabling, and wireless solutions.

Marty Kaufman, Accent’s president and founder, leads the company in catering to small- to medium-sized businesses.

When utilizing the Microsoft Server Platform competency, a business must demonstrate knowledge in building, designing, deploying and supporting the Windows Server operating system, Windows Server–based applications and Microsoft server infrastructure.

The Microsoft Partner Network is designed to supply organizations that deliver products and services based on the Microsoft platform with the training, resources and help they need to bring their customers a superior experience and exceptional results.

Source:http://www.ocmetro.com/t-Accent-Computer-Solutions-earns-top-Microsoft-service-designation-2-9-12x.aspx

Cognizant Technology Solutions (CTSH) Q4 2011 Earnings Call February 8, 2012 8:00 AM ET

Operator

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Cognizant Technology Solutions Fourth Quarter 2011 Earnings Conference Call. [Operator Instructions] I would now like to turn the conference over to David Nelson, Vice President, Investor Relations and Treasury at Cognizant.

David Nelson

Thank you, operator, and good morning, everyone. By now, you should have received a copy of the earnings release for the company’s fourth quarter 2011 results. If you have not, a copy is available on our website, cognizant.com. The speakers we have on today’s call are Francisco D’Souza, Chief Executive Officer; and Gordon Coburn, President, both of which are slightly under the weather, recovering from colds. And we’re also delighted to have with us Karen McLoughlin, our new Chief Financial Officer.

Before we begin, I would like to remind you that some of the comments made on today’s call and some of the responses to your questions may contain forward-looking statements. These statements are subject to the risks and uncertainties as described in the company’s earnings release and other filings with the SEC.

I would now like to turn the call over to Francisco D’Souza. Please go ahead, Francisco.

Francisco D’Souza

Thank you, David, and good morning, everyone. Thanks for joining us today. This morning, I’m joined by Gordon Coburn, our newly appointed President; and Karen McLoughlin, our newly appointed CFO. As we announced this morning, Gordon and Karen have taken expanded roles within Cognizant, which I will talk about shortly. I’m pleased to announce the solid fourth quarter results for Cognizant that kept very strong 2011 performance. Our revenue grew nearly 4% sequentially, and nearly 27% over the year-ago quarter to $1.66 billion. This brings full year revenue to $6.12 billion, more than 33% growth over 2010, once again demonstrating the strength of our value proposition, the depth of our client relationship, and the exceptional execution of our strategy.

As I look back on 2011, I’m proud of Cognizant’s many accomplishments. First, we continue to have track record of industry-leading growth. 33% growth is all the more significant when considered against the backdrop of an economy that was more volatile than we expected at this time last year. Europe grew slower than expected during the back half of 2011, but demand throughout other geographies remain solid, fueling strong annual results, and reinforcing confidence in our approach and our value proposition.

Second, we strengthened our client relationships by delivering on our unique value proposition that bears intimate domain expert client teams with a robust seamless global delivery network. Throughout 2011, we added 317 new clients and increased the number of strategic clients by 25 to 191, the largest increase in our history. Strong results from our recently concluded third-party annual customer satisfaction survey showed that clients continued to see high levels of service quality even as we scale. And perhaps most significantly, 13 accounts contributed more than $100 million in 2011 revenue, illustrating the depth of our client relationships.

Third, we, again, hired and retained an outsized share of the talent marketplace. We grew our team by more than 33,000 this year and closed the fourth quarter with an attrition rate just over 10%, amongst the lowest in our industry. The fact that associates see Cognizant as a great place to work and to build long-term careers is reflected in record-high satisfaction scores from our third-party annual employee survey. Fourth, we stayed true to our reinvestment strategy by maintaining stable operating margins, and reinvesting in the business. Our approach of distributing investments across 3 horizons strengthened an already robust services portfolio. As a result, we are well-aligned to help clients with the dual mandates of simultaneously reducing costs and innovating for growth and competitiveness.

Within our Horizon 1 services, offerings such as application development and maintenance, testing and packaged application services, our emphasis has been on driving ever-greater levels of productivity for clients through best-in-class methodologies and a more aggressive move to variable pricing models, so-called managed services. We also continue to strengthen our offerings with tuck-under acquisitions such as Zaffera, which bolsters our SAP capabilities.

Within our Horizon 2 offerings, we have achieved critical mass across consulting or CBC, Business Process Outsourcing or BPO and IT Infrastructure Services or ITIS. Our focus is now on scaling them across industries and clients. Our business consulting ranks have grown to over 2,900 consultants that are increasingly working with senior members of the CXO suite to deliver large-scale, end-to-end transformational programs.

Within BPO, we executed on our strategy of focusing on vertical processes that require deep domain and functional knowledge, and then benefit from the integration of consulting, IT and BPO services. This included enhancing our mortgage processing capabilities through our acquisition of CoreLogic’s India operations. And within ITIS, we continue to win and manage a growing pipeline of large deals, launching one of the biggest projects in practice history with a European investment bank and beginning an end-to-end infrastructure outsourcing program for a retailer with more than 1,000 facilities in over 75 cities.

And finally, within Horizon 3, we are seeding investments in emerging offerings, the clear foundation for our long-term growth. Though these practices remain in the infancy, we saw strong traction amongst clients. This was partially a result of the mind share that we have captured through our thought leadership campaign that highlight the changing nature of the Future of Work. I’ll speak more about Horizon 3 shortly.

Before moving move on, I’d like to take a moment to thank our associates around the world for their contributions to making 2011 another stellar year for Cognizant. We could not continue to deliver strong results quarter-after-quarter without their support.

I’d now like to shift gears and turn to our outlook for 2012. Two weeks ago, I attended the World Economic Forum in Davos, and I had an opportunity to speak with and hear from global leaders in government and business. While there was universal acknowledgment that helps challenges lie ahead, the overall tone was optimistic. As we look to our future, we share that sense of optimism. While the macro environment, especially in Europe, will remain volatile in the coming months, our optimism stems from our strong conviction that our value proposition is more relevant than ever. As clients seek a partner who can drive cost savings and innovation on one integrated platform, they are increasingly turning to us.

In North America, our largest market, recent economic data has been encouraging. Close examination of that data shows that while overall unemployment remains high in the U.S., it is only 4% for those with a college degree. This is creating an acute talent shortage that will only be exacerbated by the growing intensity with which clients use technology. Our ability to provide clients with global access to talent is a key enabler of their competitiveness, and will be a long-term driver of our business.

At the same time, we continue to be strong advocates of immigration and education reform as solutions for long-term U.S. competitiveness. In Europe, the protracted volatility is more concerning. While some clients have slowed their pace of discretionary spending for the short-term, they continue to seek out cost savings. In addition, shrinking populations in many European countries create a talent gap that is arguably more intense than that of the U.S. We have seen some European financial institutions relocating technology and operations activities to geographies such as in Asia-Pacific in order to address these issues. This trend will fuel our growth in those regions.

Europe remains attractive over the long term, especially as economic pressures create additional demand for our services. The demand is reflected in the 14 new logos we signed across the U.K. and Continental Europe in Q4 and a growing pipeline of work at existing clients. As an example, we recently signed a multimillion euro contract with a large European multinational to provide a broad range of IT services. This global strategic partnership will see increasing scope of IT services over time.

When we look at spending patterns for 2012, we continue to see normal budget cycles in North America and Europe. Our view remains that 2012 IT and operations budgets will remain flat with a slight upward bias in the U.S. as the recovery continues. While we expect long-term prospects for our European business to be strong, we have assumed that growth could remain muted during 2012. In light of these assumptions, we are confident in our ability to deliver revenue of at least $1.7 billion for the first quarter of 2012 and at least $7.53 billion for the full year, an annual growth rate of at least 23%.

Our success in 2012 will rely on strong execution in 3 areas. First, we will strengthen our Horizon 1 and Horizon 2 offerings by expanding their reach across clients, industries and geographies. Second, we will invest heavily in Horizon 3 offerings to stay ahead of changing client needs and to build a strong foundation for future growth and third, we will continue to scale our operating model and expand our senior leadership team.

Let me briefly touch on each of these 3 areas. Offerings from Horizon 1 and 2 will continue to deliver the lion’s share of Cognizant’s revenue and revenue growth in 2012. In each of these core areas, the global delivery model remained under-penetrated. When combined with a relentless economic pressure to continuously lower costs, we see robust expansion of an addressable market where we have routinely captured market share.

Turning to Horizon 3. We will continue to invest in emerging opportunities that keep Cognizant on a trajectory of long-term market-leading growth. While these offerings are unlikely to have a material revenue impact in 2012, they represent areas of high importance for our clients where we will differentiate ourselves.

Horizon 3 investments will fall into 3 broad areas. First, our investments in new markets. This involve adapting our global delivery model around existing offerings to serve new industries, including targeted areas of government and new geographies such as Latin America. Second, our investments in services around the new IT architecture, namely, Enterprise Analytics and cloud mobile and social computing. And third, our investments in new delivery models, primarily nonlinear models that are based on proprietary intellectual property and allow us to decouple revenue and headcount, most notably with the investments in platform-based, business process solutions, where we leverage our people and a multi-tenant technology platform to process clients’ transactions.

And finally, we recognize that our continued success depends on scaling the business and managing with equal vigor and discipline across all 3 horizons. In recognition of this imperative, this morning, we announced an expansion of our management team of which you have no doubt already read. Gordon Coburn, our long-time Chief Financial and Operating Officer had promoted to President. Gordon will work closely with Raj Metha, who’s been promoted to Group Chief Executive of Industries and Markets, overseeing our industry vertical teams; and Chandra Sekaran, who has been promoted to Group Chief Executive of Technology and Operations, overseeing our service lines that span across industry groups. Together, Gordon, Raj and Chandra will oversee all aspects of our current business operations. Each is a tremendously accomplished Cognizant veteran, who has been with the company for well over a decade. I have the utmost confidence in their continued success.

Karen McLoughlin, an 8-year veteran of Cognizant has been promoted to Chief Financial Officer. Karen has most recently led our financial planning and analysis team, a group that she architected and built during her time here. In addition, Karen has spearheaded critical transformation initiatives that have contributed materially to the efficiency and effectiveness of our operations. This includes the role she has recently played, leading the team responsible for the execution of our Cognizant 2015 program, an enterprise-wide initiative that is examining every aspect of our business to ensure continued success as our clients’ most trusted partner.

Malcolm Frank, who joined Cognizant in 2005, has been promoted to Executive Vice President of Strategy and Marketing. During his tenure, Malcolm has made extraordinary contributions to Cognizant’s position as a Tier 1 provider. An industry-recognized thought leader, Malcolm has been the Chief Architect of our corporate strategy and built an award-winning marketing approach that he has — that has made Cognizant’s success possible.

I will retain the role of Chief Executive Officer and continue to oversee Cognizant’s strategic direction with a special focus on our long-term growth agenda. Specifically, I’ll lead group comprised of a few senior executives responsible for working hand-in-hand with our core business to develop profitable, sustainable and scalable new offerings around the Horizon 3 areas I outlined earlier.

Over time, our goal will be to increase the share of revenue that Cognizant derives from recently introduced offerings and to increase the proportion of clients that consume those offerings. I will now turn the call over to Gordon Coburn, our new President, to review our detailed financial and operating metrics; and Karen, our new CFO, who will take you through 2012 guidance. After which, we’ll open up the floor to questions and I’ll end with a few closing remarks. Gordon?

Gordon J. Coburn

Thank you, Francisco, and good morning to everyone. 2011 was a great year for us. We grew over 33%, while maintaining stable margins and a healthy balance sheet. While we did not see any budget flush in Q4, we saw a broad-based growth across industries and service lines through the quarter.

During the fourth quarter, we experienced continued growth in our financial services segment, which includes our practices in insurance, banking and transaction processing. This segment grew 3.7% on a sequential basis and 22.6% year-over-year. It represented 40.9% of revenue for the quarter. For the full year, this segment grew over 29%. Q4 growth within financial services was driven by ongoing traction for IT infrastructure services and high-end BPO services such as securities processing, board operations and underwriting and claims processing, and continued ramp-up in regulatory work including initial development assignments in addition to consulting.

Healthcare continued its growth during the quarter with 6.3% sequential growth and 34.7% year-over-year. This segment represented 27.5% of revenues. For the full year, healthcare grew almost 38%. The continued solid growth within this segment was driven by reform-related work including ICD-10 and consumerization of health plans. Ramp-up of pharmacy benefit, management providers and initial traction in Horizon 3 offerings such as business process as a service, cloud-based CRM and mobile technology.

Retail manufacturing and logistics continued its growth during the quarter and grew 2.8% sequentially and 30.9% year-over-year. It represented 19.2% of revenues. For the full year, this segment grew over 40%. Demand within this segment was driven by ramp-up of transformation projects and large strategic accounts as well as growing demand for services such as e-commerce integration.

The remaining 12.5% of revenue came primarily from other service-oriented industries of communications, entertainment, media and high technology, which as a group, grew 1.3% sequentially and 20.1% year-over-year. For the full year, this segment grew 26%. Application development represented 51% of revenue and application management, 49% for the quarter. Development grew 30.9% year-over-year and 4.3% sequentially. Management grew 23.1% year-over-year and 3.5% sequentially. We saw fairly balanced growth between development and management as clients expanded outsourcing projects to address their 2012 savings objectives. For the full year, application development represent 51% of revenue and grew 41%, while application management represent 49% of revenue and grew 26%.

During the quarter, 79.8% of revenue came from clients in North America. Europe was 16.5% and 3.7% of revenue came from our clients in Asia Pacific, the Middle East and Latin America. For the quarter, North America grew 6.1% sequentially and 31.1% year-over-year. For the year, North America grew 34%. For the quarter, all of Europe declined 5.6% sequentially and grew 8.8% year-over-year. For the year, Europe grew 28%. Continental Europe declined 8% sequentially on Q4 and the United Kingdom declined 4.2%. European revenue was negatively impacted by currency movements of approximately $8.6 million compared to the third quarter. On a constant-dollar basis, Europe declined 2.7% sequentially and grew 8.6% year-over-year. The macroeconomic issues in Europe continued to result in some volatility and constraints on discretionary spending, particularly in life sciences and financial services.

As expected on a sequential basis, our pricing was flat during the fourth quarter as most of our 2011 price increases were reflected in our run rate coming into the quarter. We closed the quarter with over 785 active customers, and a number of accounts which we consider to be strategic increased by 6. This brings our total number of strategic clients to 191. We continue to see a trend towards our newer strategic clients, embracing a wider range of Cognizant services at an earlier stage in the relationship.

Turning to costs. On a GAAP basis, cost of revenues exclusive of depreciation and amortization, was approximately $971 million and included $4.1 million of stock-based compensation expense. The increase in cost of revenues is primarily due to additional staff both on-site and offshore required to support our revenue growth. We increased our technical staff by over 7,200 during the quarter and ended the quarter with over 132,000 technical staff.

Fourth quarter SG&A, including depreciation and amortization, was $385 million on a GAAP basis and included approximately $21.9 million of stock-based compensation expense. Our GAAP operating margin was 18.5% for the quarter and our non-GAAP operating margin, which excludes stock-based compensation expense, was 20.1%, slightly above our target range of 19% to 20%. The average rate of the rupee was 50.7 in Q4 versus 45.7 in Q3. $225 million of rupee-denominated operating expense cash flow hedges were settled in Q4. This resulted in a $14.3 million loss, which was recognized in operating expenses. We further extended our India rupee expense hedging program with over $3.5 billion in outstanding hedges of our rupee expenses, which will mature each month through 2015 at an average rate of approximately 50.9. We have $10.9 million of interest income. In addition, we had $4 million of other nonoperating income. This included a net foreign exchange gain of $3.8 million.

Our GAAP tax rate for the quarter was 25.7% and for the full year, 24.4%. Our diluted share count for the quarter was 308.8 million shares, down slightly from Q3, primarily due to the full quarter impact of the share repurchase we made in late Q3. During the fourth quarter, we repurchased 40,000 shares at an average price of $60 for a total cost of $2.4 million. Within our currently authorized $600 million repurchase program, we have purchased approximately 5.6 million shares at a cost of $380 million.

Turning to the balance sheet. Our balance sheet remains very healthy. We finished the quarter with over $2.4 billion in cash and short-term investments. During the fourth quarter, operating activities generated $285 million of cash. Finance activities generated $21 million of cash. This was comprised of net proceeds of $23.7 million related to option exercises and related tax benefits as well as our employee stock purchase program, partially offset by expenditures of $2.4 million towards our share repurchase program.

We spent approximately $124.6 million on capital expenditures during the quarter. Our full year capital expenditures for 2011 was approximately $290 million, slightly above our original expectations of $285 million. During 2012, we expect our capital expenditures to total approximately $370 million.

Based on our approximately $1.3 billion receivables balance on December 31, we finished the quarter with a DSO including unbilled receivables of 73 days, unchanged from the third quarter, and up slightly from 71 days in the fourth quarter of last year. The unbilled portion of our receivables balance is approximately $140 million, down from $163 million at the end of Q3. Approximately 66% of the Q4 unbilled balance was billed in January.

32.3% of our revenues came from fixed-price contracts during the fourth quarter and 31.7% during the full year. Net headcount increased by over 7,300 people during the quarter. 56% of gross additions for the quarter were direct college hires, while 44% were lateral hires of experienced professionals. We ended the quarter with over 137,700 employees globally. During 2011, we added over 33,700 employees globally. One of our goals for 2011 was to achieve an improved balance between college hirings and lateral hires. I’m pleased to report that we were successful in achieving this goal, with 48% of our 2011 hires coming from campus.

Attrition in the fourth quarter was 10.1%, lower than Q3 attrition of 13.4%. Our attrition rate for Q4 was the lowest since the first quarter of 2003, barring the first quarter of 2009, which was the aftermath of the financial crisis. As we have discussed in the past, there’s no consistent methodology in the industry to report attrition. We have historically reported attrition by annualizing the turnover, which occurs within the quarter, including both voluntary and involuntary. Our attrition statistics include all departures, including BPO and employees in our training program.

Utilization decreased slightly on a sequential basis during Q4. Offshore utilization was approximately 68%. Offshore utilization, excluding recent college graduates who were in our training program, was approximately 80%. On-site utilization remain flat at about 94% during the quarter.

Our operational focus for 2011 was centered around our ability to scale our people, processes and infrastructure to support the increasing complexity of our business and to capitalize on opportunities that the market presented. We made significant progress against these goals through the year, particularly in the area of talent management and community relations, which we expect to build on further in 2012.

On prior earnings calls, we highlighted various initiatives to sharpen and enhance our employee value proposition. These efforts resulted in the highest employee satisfaction scores in our history during 2011. Our associates believe that we are winning the war for talent and are proud to work for us. They see value in the long-term opportunities our industry-leading growth offers for them. The relevance of our employee value proposition is also reflected in our Q4 attrition rate of 10%, among the lowest in the industry.

We continue to be regarded as the #1 employer of choice in India for graduates of top business and technical schools and enjoy top placement at every one of the schools we targeted. Our university campus — our U.S. Campus Recruiting Program, which kicked off in 2010, has yielded dividends as our first-class is now serving our clients in various parts of the country. We’ve expanded the program to add 3 additional undergraduates institutions and 7 more business schools. Our next class starts work next month. We have also launched similar programs in the United Kingdom and Continental Europe. We accomplished all these while actively giving back to the communities in which we live and operate. In India, our grassroots Outreach program started by associates in 2007 logged more than 80,000 volunteer hours, a 200% increase over 2010. This is now being replicated globally in Argentina, China, the Philippines, the U.K. and the United States.

This year in the United States, we unveiled our Making the Future campaign, an education-based initiative designed to promote programs that supports stem education. We believe that stem education can have a long-term impact on the economic development in the U.S. through a promotion of innovation and a concept of creating and building.

Before I turn the call over to Karen McLoughlin, our new CFO, to discuss our 2012 outlook, I’d like to wrap up by saying that I am excited about my new role at Cognizant. As I move into the President role, I do so with confidence that we have a world-class financial organization in place. Karen is an outstanding finance professional, with a deep understanding of the importance of a CFO being tightly aligned and involved in the business, and she has a solid knowledge of the Cognizant business.

With Karen reporting to me in her new role, I plan to stay actively involved with our ongoing investor communications programs, and look forward to seeing many of you at future investor events. I’d like to now make a hand off to our new CFO as I turn the call over to Karen for discussion of our 2012 guidance.

Karen McLoughlin

Thank you, Gordon, and good morning, everyone. I am very excited about the opportunity to serve as Cognizant’s new CFO, and look forward to meeting many of you over the coming months through our investor Outreach programs. I would now like to comment on our growth expectations for Q1 and for the full year 2012.

For the first quarter of 2012, we are projecting revenue of at least $1.7 billion. For the full year 2012, we expect to continue delivering industry-leading revenue growth. Based on current conditions and client indications, we are projecting revenue of at least $7.53 billion, which represents full year growth of at least 23%.

During Q1 and for the full year, we expect to operate within our target operating margin range of 19% to 20%, excluding the impact of stock-based compensation expense. Therefore, we are currently comfortable with our ability to deliver in Q1 GAAP EPS of $0.79 and non-GAAP EPS of $0.85, which excludes estimated stock-based compensation expense of $0.06. This guidance anticipates a Q1 share count of approximately 310 million shares and a tax rate of approximately 25%. Our guidance excludes any nonoperating FX gains or losses.

For the full year 2012, we expect our GAAP EPS to be at least $3.43 and our full year non-GAAP EPS to be at least $3.69, excluding $0.26 of estimated full year stock-based compensation expense. This guidance anticipates a full year share count of approximately 312 million shares and a tax rate of approximately 25%. It also excludes any nonoperating FX gains or losses.

Source:http://seekingalpha.com/article/350601-cognizant-technology-solutions-ceo-discusses-q4-2011-results-earnings-call-transcript

Wipro Technologies, the Global Information Technology, Consulting and Outsourcing business of Wipro Limited (NYSE: WIT) today announced the launch of ‘FLoW’ an Oracle-based Pricing, Supply Chain And Finance Management Solution, for the retail sector. The solution will provide retail franchises and wholesalers greater data visibility needed for faster and more accurate trading transactions.. The technology is a composite solution to the Oracle Retail Merchandising System (RMS), developed in line with result of customer feedback.

‘FLoW’ will enable users get a comprehensive view of their wholesale operations in sync with other functionalities of Oracle’s Retail Suite. This significantly increases visibility and operational efficiency, as users can now see and manage their Retail, Franchise and Wholesale operations on one integrated dashboard. The flexibility of the solution means that retail franchises and wholesalers have more control over pricing, fulfillment and billing. Additionally, the solution which is fully aligned with Oracle Retail leverages Oracle RMS functionalities such as item creation, transfers, and replenishment.

Mike Davies, Vice President, Wipro Retail – Europe, Latin America and Wipro’s Global Oracle Retail Practice said: “Historically, retail suites have offered broad functionality for the general retail environment, but not much has been done for the benefit of franchises and wholesalers. Customer feedback indicates the need for a comprehensive retail solution that allows them the best of both worlds and allows the user to oversee the entire process from beginning to end. Wipro is uniquely positioned to provide this level of flexibility because of our deep retail knowledge and experience in working with a wide variety of retail businesses, across the globe as well as our strong partnership with Oracle.”

Wipro’s retail experience spans global customers across geographies and the company’s focus is to integrate legacy investments and future proof systems used to manage Operations, CRM (Customer Relationship Management), Shrinkage, ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning), Data Warehousing, Predictive Data Analytics and Price Optimization. Wipro’s capabilities span Grocery, Fashion, as well as Health and Wellness Retailing. Wipro is a tier 1 Oracle Retail Partner and one of the most successful integrators of Oracle Retail solutions.

Source:http://www.moneylife.in/business-wire-news/wipro-launches-flow-a-technology-solution-for-the-retail-sector/29755.html

Oppenheimer initiates coverage on HiSoft Technology International (NASDAQ: HSFT) with a Outperform. PT $14.00.

The firm comments, “By continuing to broaden its services capabilities, expanding its customer base and its “share of wallet” with existing clients, penetrating new verticals, and increasing its domestic focus, we believe HSFT is well positioned to participate in the rapid growth of China-based offshore IT services market as well as the emerging domestic IT outsourcing market.”

For an analyst ratings summary and ratings history on HiSoft Technology International click here. For more ratings news on HiSoft Technology International click here.

Shares of HiSoft Technology International closed at $10.00 yesterday, with a 52 week range of $8.02-$34.00.

Source:http://www.streetinsider.com/New+Coverage/Oppenheimer+Starts+HiSoft+Technology+International+%28HSFT%29+at+Outperform/7070329.html

The era of big data, James Velasquez, Country Manager, IBM Philippines

The IT industry and the broader economy are being transformed by the rising tide of global integration, by a new computing model and by new client needs for integration and innovation. Organizations are transforming their business and creating smarter systems in order to compete effectively, locally and globally. Advancing these systems to be more instrumented, intelligent and interconnected requires a profound shift in management and governance toward far more collaborative approaches.

Let me share some of the key trends IBM is looking at for 2012:

Smarter computing. Over the last three years, IBM recognized that there was a pattern to the way that most successful companies were approaching their IT infrastructure. These companies were thinking about computing in new ways—and using it to create formidable opportunities for growth and innovation…despite facing such challenges as tremendous demands for service, inflexible infrastructures, flat budgets and incomplete, unreliable data. To be sure, the winners in this new frontier, the era of big data, will be the businesses that tap into and leverage this information to make better choices, find innovative solutions and respond to trends better and faster than their competitors. But they can only succeed if the overall architectures of their computing systems are smart enough to keep up.

Through a new approach we call Smarter Computing, enterprises can tackle constraints they are facing from this explosion of data, inflexible infrastructure, escalating IT costs, and security and reliability concerns. It is realized through an integrated IT system that is designed for big data through advanced analytics to harness real-time data for deeper insights, necessary for forward-thinking companies and especially in the government sector, as agencies cannot make quick, smart decisions, without the most relevant, accurate information. They must therefore collect, store, manage and secure all available data, in all forms to build a holistic, integrated vision across institutions and sectors. By analyzing and harnessing information from all aspects of society, governments can better collaborate internally and with public and private partners to improve existing services and pioneer new initiatives that improve our lives.

Smarter Computing is also realized through being tuned to the task by helping to automate and integrate advanced business process management through matching workloads to optimized systems, which can all be managed with cloud technologies. This means organizations and governments must be able to support specific workloads with an enhanced computing framework, but must also be flexible enough to respond to changing needs, to capitalize on emerging opportunities from these changes. This will result in double capacity for IT services, flat IT costs and the ability to implement new breakthrough services. Smarter computing is so fundamental and core, that it is not optional—it is not a journey that you start or a project that you finish—it is actually becoming the way we do things, through leveraging the most relevant technology in analytics, cloud computing and workloads.

Social business. The world is becoming more social. Just as e-business changed business forever, now, 10 years later we find ourselves at another junction: the coming of age for Social Business—as social computing, policies, governance and cultures are integrated into enterprise design. The explosion of mobile devices and new Cloud delivery models has paved a unique way for industries to take step further in transforming the era of Social Business.

Today, everyone is a broadcaster, publisher and a critic—there is nowhere to hide, and transparency is the new price of entry. Once viewed as a tool for students and teens to connect with one another, businesses are now looking for ways to adopt similar concepts to better connect their employees, partners and clients and to transform globally. The ways employees interact, relationships form, decisions are made, work is accomplished and the ways goods are purchased are fundamentally changing. Consumers now wield unprecedented power over how brands are perceived.

IBM sees social business and the move to enable the mobile workforce as a key driver of business transformation, helping all aspects of an organization from marketing, human resources, sales and customer support and development, leverage the power of social concepts in their business processes. Becoming a social business can help an organization deepen customer relationships, generate new ideas faster, and enable a more effective workforce.

Organizations that embrace the power of social technologies will unleash the productivity and innovation throughout the entire value chain—from employees to partners to suppliers to customers. But an effective social business can’t exist without a strong set of analytics resources and know-how behind the scenes.

Business analytics and optimization. Enterprises need a way to manage and mine the deluge of potentially valuable information, and the key is advanced data analytics. Business analytics software is being incorporated in almost every business process within organizations. Sophisticated analysis of social media or social analytics could be used by manufacturers in planning future products, by retailers in choosing which products to stock, and by marketers in planning advertising campaigns.

It could also help a city or government better serve its constituents. Complex societal, economic, political and environmental pressures are placing intense demands on public sector organizations to make smarter decisions, deliver results and demonstrate accountability. The ability to analyze social conversation in real-time can help officials see how constituents are responding to policy decisions or how outreach could be varied across different channels to get the word out about specific events. Social media analysis could also serve as an early warning system for governments around special events and unexpected occurrences.

For example, public safety officials could use this technology as part of a rapid response system for flooding, earthquakes and other natural disasters; or to identify areas of public services delivery that need improvement. An example of analytics put to good use is Watson. This breakthrough in analytic innovation represents a breakthrough in terms of volume of information stored, and the ability to access it quickly. Watson is just the beginning of how computers will be designed to learn as well as handle specific workloads. Watson sets the stage for IBM to further its thought leadership on the future of computing.

Cloud computing. With so many of us accessing clouds in our daily lives, it should be no surprise that CEOs, C-suite, corporate decision-makers and even government agencies are beginning to demand the same level of flexibility, efficiency, connectivity, and ease in their corporate data centers.

Cloud computing is quickly emerging as the IT delivery model that can significantly do this: reduce IT costs and complexities while improving workload optimization and service delivery. At the same time, it can increase business performance by creating new business models, enabling speed and innovation, allowing re-engineering business processes and supporting new levels of collaboration. Cloud computing is massively scalable, provides a superior user experience, and is characterized by new, Internet-driven economics.

Security and resilience. According to some estimates, 2011 became the year of billion-dollar disasters. Natural disasters have become a top risk concern for most organizations. There are also business-driven risks that include audits, new product rollouts, financial risk, fraud and even failure to comply with government standards. All of these can be minimized if organizations anticipate threats and plan accordingly. Security is the posture taken to protect people, assets, data and technology across an entire organization, while resilience is the ability to rapidly adapt and respond to business disruptions and to maintain continuous business operations.

The exponential growth of mobile, Julian Persaud, Managing Director, Google Southeast Asia

For years, people predicted that next year would be the year of the mobile Internet. In 2012, we can finally say that last year was the year of the mobile, and now we have to look at the consequences. Asia is the world’s largest mobile market (with Africa now becoming a strong number two); more smartphones are shipped there than to any other region; it boasts some of the world’s best networks for mobile Internet. These are my picks for global and regional trends that are most likely to have a big impact on the Philippines in 2012:

The year that Asia’s silent Internet boom proves its resilience. The world faces a lot of economic uncertainty. But the absolute size of the Internet will continue to grow in Asia, by any measure. Data plans will continue to be cheaper relative to income. Millions of people will arrive on the Internet for the first time and will continue to drive economic activity across Asia. No one will notice, because they tend to see the Internet’s economic value as lying in high-tech companies, when in fact any company or person with an Internet connection is driving its value. A series of economic reports have confirmed the Internet as the fastest-growing sector of the economies of Japan, Korea, Indonesia and Australia. That pace was steady throughout the worst of the economic crisis in 2008.

The year you start thinking of the mobile Internet as the “real” Internet. In 2011, the mobile phone matched the desktop as an Internet experience—the tighter the integration with the Internet, the smarter the phone got. More than 550,000 Android devices are activated globally every day. We saw that shift in Google Maps, which now receives more mobile queries than desktop queries. And we see it in terms of apps. From its start in 2008 until March 2010, users had downloaded 3 billion apps from Android Market. In the seven months since then, 7 billion apps have been downloaded. 2012 will be the year when the desktop seems more like a

side window onto Asia’s mobile Web. One factor driving that: parts and expertise are driving down prices to the point where smartphones will be within the price range of millions more people than they were in 2011. We don’t see any decrease in the exponential growth of mobile search.

The year you fall in love with a device you never owned before. The smartphone is about to be joined by a host of other devices that will change the way the mainstream looks at the Internet, whether it’s tablets, or netbooks that have nothing on them but a browser. Notebooks that run directly on top of the Internet will be not just fast, nimble and cheap but finally get people to think of the Web as everything they want to do with a computer, not just pages to visit. Already in 2011, the tablet was becoming a big hitter in every single market. If you think it’s still just for the elite or young then consider this: In 2011, Toyota did a major ad campaign aimed at iPads in Indonesia that led to 4,000 people downloading a promotional app, showing that the tablet’s a widespread device. 2012 is the year when tablets go from widespread to mainstream, everywhere: At least one company has announced plans to release a tablet that costs less than $100 in the coming year. Given that 60 percent of the world’s population lives in Asia—and price is a major obstacle in technological adoption—sub-$100 tablets are a revolutionary innovation that will put more computers in the hands of more people.

The year you bring your own devices to work. Consumers are usually a step ahead of their workplace when it comes to innovative technologies and devices. This has led to the common sight of employees bringing their personal tablets and smartphones to work. There were a few barriers that made IT managers wary of letting people use their personal devices: for one thing, they didn’t have the controls necessary to manage these devices to preserve the company’s security in the event they were stolen. But those controls are in place. Australian companies Suncorp and Qantas experimented with serving corporate information to mobile devices. In 2012, technology solutions will evolve so IT managers have more choice, control and visibility into mobile productivity within their organizations. Besides decreased operational costs, employee satisfaction and productivity will probably also rise. After all, people have all their e-mails, songs, videos—whether work related or not—on one device.

Cybersecurity rides the mobile wave, Luichi Robles, Senior Country Manager, Symantec Philippines

One of the key cybersecurity trends that organizations should note moving into 2012 is the continual increase of Advanced Persistent Threats (APTs), a type of targeted attack that uses a wide variety of techniques. 2011 saw the foundation for the next of such attack being laid into the coming years. APTs target industrial control-related organizations and could attack organizations or partner organizations that do business with their primary targets.

In addition, another significant trend that businesses in the Philippines need to pay attention to is that the high increase of smart mobile devices will also increase the risks surrounding them, particularly mobile malware and data loss. The key concerns in this area that will impact businesses in the Philippines is that employees could access sensitive corporate information with these devices without being detected. Employee with malicious intent could easily steal highly confidential intellectual property.

Cloud computing will be a key trend in 2012 which is expected to drive changes in organizations. According to the 2011 State of Cloud Survey, organizations in Philippines are excited about cloud, with 76 to 87 percent at least discussing all forms of cloud. However, there are significant gaps between what organizations in the Philippines were expecting to achieve and what they actually achieved in cloud deployment. For example, 82 percent expected cloud to improve their IT agility, yet only 51 percent found that it actually did. These gaps are indicative of the immaturity of the market.

As organizations in the Philippines look into cloud technologies in 2012, they will need to consider how they use IT and existing resources—servers, storage and people. Cloud computing is more about the people and processes. Organizations must change how they purchase IT, how they consume IT, and how they organize IT to provide cloud service.

In 2012, disaster recovery plan in organizations is also expected to be tested even more by natural disasters. Symantec expects to continue seeing the unpredictable environmental changes test organizations’ disaster recovery plans in the year ahead. Companies will need to be disaster proof and start looking at business services more holistically and automate recovery process to recover faster and reduce their reliance on personnel. The question is have they learned their lesson from this year or do they have to experience it for themselves in 2012 to take action?

Increasing enterprise mobility and integration, Jerry Rapes, President and CEO, Exist

Companies are integrating mobility and/or building mobile versions of their enterprise systems due to the rising popularity of mobile devices as the preferred means to communicate. Applications that provide real-time info and that enable on-the-go transactions have found favor with consumers around the world.

Exist has invested heavily in helping its customers in the telecoms and healthcare markets to develop solutions on these emerging mobile platforms, as they seek competitive advantage.

Last year, Exist expanded its service portfolio to offer Android development on top of its iOS, Ruby on Rails, and Java engineering capabilities. The demand for mobile applications, as well as web applications that converge with mobile devices, present a lot of growth opportunities for Exist.

In 2012, there will be more integration of enterprise systems, growth in mobile platforms; and cloud will play a very important role in making these trends happen.

Exist is making aggressive efforts to expand in the telco, healthcare, and IT markets in the coming year. Further solidifying R&D, Exist formalized the Office of the CTO with Mike Lim at the helm. Exist is on its way to creating a solution that combines new generation mobile and cloud technologies to bring business intelligence and efficient computing to the enterprise. Exist also partnered with Morphlabs, a leader in converged Dynamic Infrastructure solutions for the enterprise, to resell mCloud Data Center Unit (DCU).

IT outsourcing will also intensify this year as more and more enterprises rely on their technology partners to help them reduce costs and deliver results faster.

Source:http://www.mb.com.ph/articles/347444/information-technology-forecasts-2012

Sri Lanka’s earnings from information communications technology (ICT) services and products grew strongly this year after rising sharply last year, officials said.

ICT and BPO (business process outsourcing) exports shot up 47 percent to 310 million US dollars in 2010-11 from the year before and will remain strong, a new survey by PricewaterhouseCoopers has found.
The sector has 175 firms employing 16,000 people, which is expected to grow as more foreign investment comes in, said Janaka Ratnayake, chairman of the Export Development Board.

The growth rate should enable the ICT and ITES (information technology enabled services) sector to reach a billion dollars in export earnings before 2015, he told a news conference.

Mano Sekaram, chairman of the EDB’s advisory committee for the ICT and BPO sectors, said the PwC survey of 175 firms was needed to find out how the sector was performing.

“This industry is a new industry,” said Sekaram, who is also general secretary of the industry body, SLASSCOM, Sri Lanka Association of Software and Services Companies.

“Transactions happen over the Internet and there’s no customs declaration of exports out of the country because you send software and services over the wire – there’s no physical transaction.”

The PwC survey report said the IT export industry earned 250 million dollars while BPOs earned 60 million dollars in 2010-11, up from 161 million dollars and 48 million dollars the year before.

The main markets for ICT exports are Europe, USA, and south Asia while the main markets for BPOs are the US, Europe, Canada and mature Asian countries.

The officials said the industry expects to maintain the growth momentum although economic crises in key markets might reduce the growth rates from existing high levels.

However, IT sector export earnings were on track to reach the target of a billion dollars by 2015, Ratnayake said.

Source:http://www.lankabusinessonline.com/fullstory.php?nid=770324816

Emily Pascua, an executive of a fast food chain office in Iligan City, was one of the lucky residents spared by floods spawned by tropical storm “Sendong” in northern Mindanao last week. When she heard that thousands of families were displaced and brought to evacuation centers due to the calamity, she and her colleagues immediately offered cooked rice to feed the evacuees.

While helping out in relief efforts, she noticed the disorderly way donations were being distributed to evacuees. She also saw how social workers were having a hard time manually organizing information on affected families.

“While we saw that help was coming in, magulo ang distribution. Walang sistema. ‘Yung iba nakakadoble-doble ang tanggap. ‘Yung iba hindi nakakakuha,” she said in a phone interview.

Because of this, Pascua and some United Nations (UN) volunteers tried to figure out a way to bring order to the relief operations. They wanted all affected families to benefit from the help reaching their area. The solution they came up with was simple: organize the data being gathered by local social workers so that they will have a clear idea on the exact number of evacuees and their specific needs.

“The lack of a system prompted us to do the other side. We decided na we will be in charge of organizing this data. Tago lang ito na effort, so while people are sending in some help, we will be able to have information kung sino at saan ba talaga kailangan ito,” she said.

This was how a “digital bayanihan” began. Pascua got in touch with information technology graduates from the Mindanao State University, who helped them create a program by which they can organize data. People from Pascua’s office, as well as her colleagues from the Iligan Chamber of Commerce, also volunteered to help scan data sheets from the Department of Social Welfare and Development, which served as the first step in converting information into soft copies.

BPOs heed call for help

The modern form of “bayanihan,” however, did not stop in Iligan. Gigi Virata, president of the Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) Association of the Philippines, was also told of efforts to organize data on evacuees in Lanao del Norte’s capital city. She heeded calls for help.

“I asked our partner associations if they can help, and they very quickly signed up for it. Some individuals in some companies even volunteered to do whatever they can to help,” she said in a separate interview.

Virata added that several Manila-based encoding and medical transcription companies agreed to do what they do best: encode scanned data sheets into spreadsheets to better organize and process the information.

“We did this so that we can keep track of the evacuees and to know their needs. We can even help people looking for each other,” she said.

What’s best is that the companies agreed to accept the encoding job without asking for any monetary returns. “The companies offered their services to organize the data pro bono. This is our way of helping those in need in Mindanao, even though we’re in Manila,” she said.

Thanks to technology

Pascua said that she plans to present an initial copy of the database from over 6,000 data sheets to local officials on Wednesday afternoon.

The database contains aggregated basic information on the evacuees, such as age and sex, so local government can figure out their immediate needs.

“If there are grants and other forms of assistance that are coming in, for sure hihingi ang donors ng data on the damage. These are all captured in the database. If you have data, you can use this data for the good of the people,” she said.

She added that she was overwhelmed by how quickly the task was accomplished, citing her gratefulness for technology. “If we are not in the age of information technology, for sure hirap tayo rito. Ngayon, in a span of hours, we already have data,” she said.

More than technology, however, Pascua said the willingness of Filipinos to help others in need made their project a success.

Source:http://www.gmanetwork.com/news/story/242921/news/regions/bpos-private-groups-do-a-digital-bayanihan-for-typhoon-hit-iligan

The rise of the “app internet” – in which users’ PCs, smartphones and tablets run the business applications – will drive completely different demands from technology next year.

That is the verdict of technology industry experts, who predicted fast-shifting pressures on technology from the rise in mobile application development, cloud computing and new security threats.

According to Forrester analysts, having said that the web, as the dominant software architecture of the Internet, was dead, a new internet is evolving – dominated by applications and now placing a strain on the technology supporting it.

“The app internet ushers in the next generation of computing,” Forrester said. The high “momentum” of personal devices growth was vastly changing mobile platform strategies.

In order to cope with the change, it said, “elastic application platforms” would emerge “to handle variable scale and portfolio balancing”. Businesses would also increasingly push for private clouds, aided by “improved virtualisation”, it said.

It added that “always on, always available” was “the new expectation” from business leaders, and networks needed to evolve to meet this.

Gartner said that “low cost cloud services” would begin a fast growth, forming “up to 15 per cent of top outsourcing players’ revenue” within three years. These industrialised services would “alter the common perceptions of pricing and value of IT”, it said.

Cloud services will top $36 billion (£23 billion) in 2012, IDC said, “growing at four times the industry rate”.

“Eighty percent of new apps will target the cloud,” it said, with Amazon “joining the $1 billion vendor club” and duelling with Google, IBM, Microsoft, Oracle, Salesforce.com and VMware.

In spite of frequent gloomy predictions by financial analysts for the world economy, IDC said there would be a 6.9 percent growth in IT spending in 2012, “turbo-charged” by mobile devices. But analysts warned of the Thailand floods’ continued severe impact on the PC supply chain, and they said some production could shift to the Americas.

The battle to lead the IT marketplace will “start to be won and lost” next year, with Amazon’s Kindle Fire taking 20 percent of media tablets, and growing Android momentum taking on the mobile OS field.

It would be a “make or break” year for Microsoft, RIM and HP in mobile devices, with the vendors respectively depending upon the success of Windows 8, BBX and tablets, IDC said.

Analyst firm CCS Insight predicted that RIM would restructure its business “into two divisions: a services unit and a hardware unit”. The aim of this would be “to provide sharper focus on the two most important elements of RIM’s business”, it said.

Industry-specific technology will also be on the rise next year, analysts said. While smart cities would drive $40 billion worth of IT investment in energy, government and healthcare sectors, retailers will use a raft of specific mobile apps, IDC predicted. Financial businesses will ramp up the use of social media, well beyond marketing.

Nevertheless, social software is being branded by some as a “bubble”, with Gartner predicting that the investment bubble for enterprise social software companies will expand next year, before a dramatic burst in 2014. There was too much “overlap” in the market, it said.

As the volume of data consumed by enterprises grows, and the demand for analytics heightens, IDC said it will be a “busy year” for Big Data-driven vendor mergers and acquisitions, around “visual discovery, predictive analytics, and Hadoop analytics”.

Tech vendor LG said there will also be a growth in network attached storage, as businesses deliver more content to smartphones and develop a need “to both back this content up and be able to access it remotely”.

Testing company SQS Group said the changes in IT were driving a demand for rapid improvements in software analysis and readiness checking.

But the changes also offered a chance for a fresh approach, it said. “There will also be a rise in Testing as a Service – as the IT industry looks to control costs and gain advantages of scale.”

Any weaknesses in the underpinnings of cloud technology “will be countered by third party vendors who will begin to offer products mimicking features similar to locally hosted solutions”, it said. “This is particularly true in areas such as database backup and recovery.”

As more businesses consider using open source software, at least for some parts of their business, they would also consider open source-based testing automation tools, SQS said.

“To offset the up-front cost of implementing test automation, open source products with no licence fees can be utilised to keep the initial investment in test automation low, thus maximising the return on investment,” it said.

The increased complexity of business technology was raising tough demands on security technology, experts said.

“Cloud computing will take mobile device (in)security to a whole new level,” said vendor Qualys. “And cybercriminals have already demonstrated that the proliferation of mobile devices is a pretty easy way to access the corporate network”

However, it said many cloud services were gradually becoming increasingly mature and secure, and added that 2012 will see “cloud-based security take the heavy lifting and complexity burden off businesses” struggling to cope. It also moves the problem “to an infinitely scalable platform”, it said.

The rising maturity of the cloud means business executives – beyond IT – will be aware of potential risks and will demand evidence of strong security. Gartner said. “By 2016, 40 percent of businesses will make proof of independent security testing a precondition for using any type of cloud service,” it explained.

Security supplier Trend Micro said the “new social networking generation”, which is entering the workplace, will “redefine privacy”. It added: “In a few years, privacy-conscious people will become the minorityan ideal prospect for attackers.”

Additionally, it said, people using their own devices for accessing corporate data would create serious security technology challenges. It explained: “Smartphone and tablet platforms, especially Android, will suffer from more cybercriminal attacks.”

“Following a flurry of developments in mobile payments, NFC and mobile banking in 2011, already 2012 is heading to be the year of the mobile attack,” said vendor Validsoft.

“Trojans such as Zitmo and Spitmo – version of Zeus and SpyEye which attack mobile devices – are already well known, and other terms such as ‘Pseudo Device Theft’, ‘SIM swapping’, ‘mobile malware’ and ‘AppPhishing’ are all starting to make their way into the tech dictionary.”

Source:http://www.mis-asia.com/tech/mobile-and-wireless/app-internet-and-mobile-devices-to-drive-massive-technology-demands-in-2012/?page=1

Cloud computing would emerge as the key advance in IT services and applications, says Gartner, the technology research firm, in its forecasts for 2012. The mavens see the cloud, which makes possible the leasing of digitised IT assets and solutions via the internet, as paradigm shifting. It implies transformative change in IT architectures, the development of products and services, and attendant delivery methods and strategies.

But the cloud, with its scalability and scope for customisation, subsumes both opportunities and threats, the report stresses. The cloud denotes the next stage in IT outsourcing that makes possible the delivery of industrial-scale IT services. By 2015, the forecast is that low-cost cloud services would ‘cannibalise up to 15% of top outsourcing players’ revenue’. So, the expert opinion is that the cloud would be disruptive for the $1-trillion global IT services market.

How would India’s IT majors, who have pioneered the global delivery platform for outsourcing, thrive in the age of the cloud? What differentiates cloud computing from traditional outsourcing and hosting services is its outcome focus and instant consumption model. Hence, the vital need for IT providers to standardise technologies and firm up best practices to deliver IT services as required.

The game-changing potential of the cloud is the delivery of specialised IT services that are pervasive and of industrial scale. As the types and range of IT services that can be provided via the cloud are far-reaching, there is much potential for myriad new applications and innovative business models too. In any case, IT has ceased to be a back-office tool to improve process; instead, its potential is rightly seen as transformative at the strategic level. Hence the need for IT providers to offer end-to-end solutions, consulting services and expertise for followthrough.

The cloud will definitely demand change in the way Indian IT does business, but is likely to grow and diversify business rather than diminish it, provided Indian IT acquires the domain expertise and consulting skills needed to play meaningfully in the changed game.

Source:http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/opinion/editorial/cloud-computing-offers-indian-information-technology-new-growth-opportunities/articleshow/11075819.cms

As Managed Service Providers (MSPs) attain more clients, it becomes necessary to examine their staff force to ensure they have the right number of people to provide superior customer service and the right ratio of customers to staff. Sydney Technology Solutions can attest to this first hand and made the move to add two new staff to their organisation.

One of the first to be hired was William Carr. William has multiple proficiencies that will allow him to fit right into his new role as Senior Systems Engineer, including advanced Cisco IOS and ASA knowledge, demonstrated Microsoft Server 2003 & 2008 experience, expertise with Microsoft client operating services and much more. With his background in working with the Bank of England and Woodhaven Homes Inc. and others, William will be a valuable asset to STS.

Next on board to join Sydney Technology Solutions was Cameron Lochhead as Level 1 Technician. Cameron’s strong point is exemplary customer service. It will be Cameron’s job to manage service levels and, most importantly, the client experience. In Cameron’s case, his undergraduate studies in Psychology and languages will be put to good use as he works with the customers. Added to his proficiencies can be added three years of customer service experience.

STS is Australia’s leading worldwide information technology (IT) outsourcing services company that makes their focus solely on the unique computing, networking and application needs of small/mid-size businesses and branch offices or specialised requirements of larger companies. At the core of providing best-in-class services is their customer – they come first.

According to Adam Rippon, President of Sydney Technology Solutions, “Both William and Cameron demonstrated during their interviews that they were the best candidates for their respective positions. There is no question that they are passionate about providing our clients with the right blend of leading-edge technology and professional client service and support which is right in line with our objectives. We are delighted to have them on board with us.”

About Sydney Technology Solutions
Sydney Technology Solutions offers a comprehensive range of systems, professional services and support with a strong emphasis on proven ‘Industry Standard’ Solutions. We are your Sydney IT Support firm.

STS is Australia’s leading worldwide information technology (IT) outsourcing services company that focuses solely on the unique computing, networking and application needs of small/mid-size businesses and branch offices or specialised requirements of larger companies.

Source:http://www.sbwire.com/press-releases/sydney-technology-solutions-family-expands-as-they-add-two-additional-new-hires-113949.htm

Information and Communication Technology – Indian businessmen and women have been asked to seize the abundant opportunities in Tanzania by investing in key areas such as Information and Communication Technology (ICT) development. The challenge was thrown here by the Minister for Communications, Science and Technology, Prof Makame Mbarawa, during the plenary session of the India-Africa Business Partnership summit which opened here on Thursday.

He said the government wants investors particularly in developing local multi-media content software that would address issues that are relevant to the national development.

“Instead of relying on software that has been designed for the entire world, we need investors who would develop a customized IT content for our country,” he said.

He told the two-day forum that has brought together ministers from different African countries, businessmen and women, diplomats and representatives from multinational companies mainly based in India that Tanzania’s fiscal and political stability offer a credible offer for investments.

“With its strategic geographical position, Tanzania places itself as the most ideal place in the entire East and Central African region where investors not only from India but world over could come and explore various untapped business opportunities,” he said.

He mentioned other areas which are yet to be tapped fully as IT parks and small ICT villages where the youth could assemble and design software that is ideal for the local markets.

He gave an example of business processing outsourcing (BPO) system which could create more jobs for Tanzanians by creating calling centres in the country.

The minister said Indian investors should also capitalize on the fast growing East African Community (EAC) market, covering over 140 million people.

He said that with the improved communication and infrastructure such as road and railway network, the EAC market offers a quick return on investment (ROI).

“The fibre optic project has made communication easier for Tanzania and the landlocked countries such as Zambia, Malawi, Burundi, Democratic Republic of Congo, Uganda and Rwanda,” he said.

The first phase of Tanzania’s 10,674-kilometre national fibre-optic backbone was completed in May last year, connecting to the SEACOM, and EASSy submarine cables.

It runs from Mombasa (Kenya) through Nairobi (Kenya), Kampala (Uganda), Kigali (Rwanda), and Bujumbura (Burundi) to Dar es Salaam.

The minister also called for investments in mining, agro-based industry, energy, manufacturing, health and education.

Deputy Minister in the Zanzibar Ministry of Trade, Industry and Marketing, Ms Thuwayba Kisasi who is also attending the summit also called on for investments in tourism, value adding on agro-products and deep sea fishing.

Source:http://www.afriquejet.com/technology-2011101425055.html

The country’s top outsourcing firm Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) today said it has become the official technology partner of the Amsterdam Marathon for a period of five years, from 2011 to 2015.

In addition to the title sponsorship, TCS will support the marathon by providing technology services and has set up a special purpose team to look at enhancing the performance and experience of the sport, TCS said in a statement.

“This sponsorship will further strengthen the relationship between the city and TCS, therefore we look forward to the new TCS Amsterdam Marathon,” the Mayor of the city of Amsterdam, Eberhard van der Laan, said.

Started in 1975, this event is one of Europe’s leading marathons and is expected to have 33,000 participants from 80 countries. This year, the marathon is being held on October 16, 2011.

“The TCS Amsterdam Marathon (as it will now be known) has grown from being an intimate event in earlier years to a global one. We are pleased to have Tata Consultancy Services as our strategic partner as we look to expand the event and also deepen our use of technology,” Simone Richardson, the Director of Stichting Sportevenementen Le Champion (the entity that organises the event), said.

TCS’ significant portfolio of sports partnerships includes tie-ups with Formula-1 racing team Ferrari, pro-cycling team Garmin-Cervelo and several marathons in major cities worldwide, including Bangalore, Boston, Chicago, Mumbai and New York.

“Given our significant and growing presence in major markets such as the US, UK and Europe, we always looking at ways to engage with and give back to the communities we work in,” TCS President – North America, UK and Europe Surya Kant said.

TCS has been operating in the Netherlands since 1992. The company operates a head office in Amsterdam, a global delivery center in Eindhoven and has over 2,000 experts catering to leading companies such as KLM, ABN AMRO, Rabobank and the ING Group.

Source:http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/tech/ites/tcs-becomes-official-technology-partner-of-amsterdam-marathon/articleshow/9745080.cms

Once vilified for leadership in outsourcing jobs, General Electric is pulling more information-technology positions back in-house.

Chief Executive Officer Jeffrey Immelt has said GE will add more than 15,000 jobs in the three years through December. About 1,100 will be outside Detroit in a center for information technology. So far, GE has hired about 660 people in Michigan, a state that led the nation in jobless rates, making it a symbol of U.S. industrial decline.

“About 50 percent of the IT work was being done by non-GE employees,” Charlene Begley, chief information technology officer, said at the center in Van Buren Township. “That strategy may have had its time, but there was a lot of downside. We lost a lot of the technical capabilities that we have to own.”

Bringing more information-technology work back to GE lets the company move quickly to develop programs that respond to technology demands.

“With iPads and whatever mobile devices people want to use, the need for better user experiences is essential to competitiveness,” Begley said. “So we’ve got a team that’s really good at writing user applications that are sexy, impressive and quick.”

Companies such as GE and General Motors that once led in outsourcing are in the forefront of a move in the opposite direction: adding workers back to their businesses in mature markets like Britain and the United States, said John Keppel, president for outsourcing consulting firm TPI International.

In the first half of 2011, the global value of information-technology outsourcing contracts fell 20 percent, showed TPI data released July 20.

“GE, GM and companies like them founded the whole outsourcing business,” Keppel said. “What we’re seeing in America is more about the maturity of the market. Clearly there are some macroeconomic factors and political factors that play into that. ”

Source:http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/business/7689336.html

In what may come as interesting technology news for entrepreneurs, a new survey from HP of more than 500 small business IT managers shows that 93 percent of companies have placed cost concerns over concerns about new technology

In what may come as interesting technology news for entrepreneurs, a new survey from HP of more than 500 small business IT managers shows that 93 percent of companies have placed cost concerns over concerns about new technology. The managers said this lead to 89 percent of these companies experiencing IT-related problems.

IT managers at cost-conscious companies said their top three problems were low-performing hardware, out-of-date hardware and unreliable hardware leading to a loss of productivity and less-than-efficient computer efficiency.

“The survey findings confirm that budget-constrained small businesses are playing tug of war when it comes to balancing smart IT purchasing decisions and their budgets,” said Stephen DiFranco, senior vice president and general manager of HP’s Personal Systems Group.

A post on Computer Weekly’s website quotes Keiichi Nakata, a reader in social informatics at the University of Reading’s Henley Business School in saying that employers have to keep their technology systems up to date to attract younger employees. Nakata said young graduates are surprised that common technology they use every day in college is not more frequently used in business.

Source:http://www.gaebler.com/News/Small-Business-Technology/Most-IT-managers-say-their-small-business-needs-technology-updates-800562217.htm

(http://www.crtechnologyinsight.com/content/) , is one of the most exclusive digital technology (DT) summit in Latin America, combining both, business meetings & conference activities and can act as a platform for the establishment of new businesses in the digital technologies industry, in Latin America. We at 01Synergy are glad to be part of the delegation of ten Indian IT companies representing India at Costa Rica Technology Insight.

With more than 200 participants from different countries and regions such as Panamá, Central America, Dominican Republic, Trinidad & Tobago, Chile, Mexico, United States, Canada, Europe and India, the 01 Synergy team will get a chance to meet with Costa Rican counterparts under a great business atmosphere and get a chance to forge partnerships.

The focus of the event will be in three main areas; networking, business meetings and conferences, promoting this way, the establishment of new business opportunities, for both national and international participants, 01Synergy hopes to find business partners in Central America.

01 Synergy has also been invited for Reception with the Indian Ambassador in Colombia H.E. Mr Warjri for the Indian Delegation.

Shopstorenow, the leading business establishment known for ready ecommerce solution for profitable business dealings launches outsourcing for continuous profitable gains in business of all of types from manufacturing, publishing to ecommerce. The company outsources web based and fulfillment services with a leading team of professionals working with years of knowledge and experience and keeping economical systems in place for companies to take advantage in order to increase productivity, customer satisfaction and revenue savings.

“We have out powered the others offering ecommerce solution as we think a step further in doing business with those collaborating to get the best out of the e-business dealings. We outsource enterprise ecommerce solution that brings in subsequent increase in sales guaranteeing rich shopper experience with advanced discounting, redundant web servers and modules fulfilling integration necessities. With it we also outsource designing, custom development and training services along with our ecommerce solution for you, for up to the mark deployment. Try our services with the least amount of investment as we outsource almost all that is needed to successfully run a business with reduced labor costs and cutting expenses on utilities, rent, insurance, supplies but increase efficiency and core competencies of business endeavors.” Said, Andy Anand, Vice President, Shopstorenow.com

Shopstorenow however charges the nominal that is required for a service with the costs tied directly to activity and specific ecommerce solution. The customers benefit out of the lower operational costs incurred with controlled overhead costs for ecommerce solution available. Additionally, the company outsources specialists available for ASP, PHP, PERL, MySQL and HTML, CSS and Java Script programming and web designers, testers, project managers, BPO professionals and marketing managers. Thus, one valuable provider that works up to help businesses succeed in development processes, GUI art implementation, application development, plug-ins and more are available at shopstorenow.com

Source:http://www.sbwire.com/press-releases/sbwire-87467.htm

IBM(IBM) has unveiled a new form of chip technology which it claims will pave the way to smaller, faster and more power-efficient processors.

The new technology, which goes by the catchy name of CMOS Integrated Silicon Nanophotonics, combines both electrical and optical components on the same piece of silicon. This lets chips communicate using pulses of light, as opposed to traditional electrical impulses, according to the tech giant.

The result of a decade’s worth of development work, Silicon Nanophotonics is part of a broader IBM strategy called Exascale computing, which sees IBM trying to develop a supercomputer capable of one trillion calculations a second. IBM says that this “exaflop supercomputer” will be approximately 1,000 times faster than the fastest machine today.

IBM is a major player in the world of high-performance computing, a term that refers to powerful computers capable of handling vast quantities of data, typically found in government research labs and on Wall Street. Server maker IBM holds the most systems on the recent list of top 500 supercomputers, ahead of HP(HPQ) and Cray.

The top 500 List is dominated by huge computer systems at government agencies such as the DOE, but the list also revealed that IBM provides supercomputer technology to companies like Lockheed Martin(LM) and a host of financial firms and IT service providers.

IBM told TheStreet that it will offer its first Silicon Nanophotonics products in the next three to five years. “We are pursuing development of Exascale systems that will use this new nanophotonics technology by the end of the decade, possibly around 2018,” said an IBM spokesman, in an e-mail.

Source:-http://www.thestreet.com/story/10935601/1/ibm-unveils-new-chip-technology.html?cm_ven=GOOGLEN

The Business Processing Outsourcing (BPO) industry is mulling over introducing a new technology by virtue of which employees working in this sector could work from home, instead of personally going to their offices. This technological intervention would not only cut expenses of the companies in
more than one way but reduce traffic congestion in major BPO hubs like Gurgaon, Bangalore and Chennai in a big way.

According to promoters of BPOs, with this technology employees in faraway places can work from their places of choice without the need to commute to offices at all.

This will enhance the efficiency of the workforce besides reducing their overhead expenses. “Also, they can work from secure environs,” said an industry source.

The security of women employees in call centres has been a major cause of concern for authorities, in the wake of shocking incidents of rape in Delhi and elsewhere.

“With just one laptop or desktop computer with internet and a phone connections, people could operate from their rooms, attend to inbound calls that otherwise land at the call centre. With this, housewives, who would never otherwise dream of joining a BPO, would be able to take jobs and do it from their homes,” said Mike Manson, director of Wesley Clover Communication Solutions. The company has introduced Mitel’s virtual unified communications solution in India.

Manson said this type of flexibility was not possible with the old PBX-based business processing model which made the employees to join BPO office as the calls land at the offices only.

“Virtualisation of voice technology would help setting up of one-seater or 3-5 seater micro BPOs in tier 3 and 4 cities from where the BPO companies are drawing talent pool,” said Sriram Srinivas, vice-president, Wesley Clover Communication Solutions. “This would not only benefit the employee to save on overheads such as rentals and high cost of living in metros but also helps the company redue cost on things such as employee transportation expenses.”

According to information technology experts, there are some technologies that allow setting up remote micro BPOs already available in India, but the idea has not picked up vastly because of some limitations.

Source:http://www.hindustantimes.com/New-technology-to-help-BPOs-cut-costs/Article1-632885.aspx

Wipro Technologies the global consulting, system integration and outsourcing business of Wipro today announced that it has entered into a 5 year strategic partnership with (Q,N,C,F)* Electricity North West to deliver end to end service transition and transformational services to maintain their IT systems through a managed service framework.

This collaboration will achieve the critical task of separation of IT operations from Electricity North West`s current service arrangement. Electricity North West owns operates and maintains the electricity distribution network throughout the North West of England.

Wipro will set-up new data centers and configure virtualized and high availability infrastructure, migrate and upgrade, where necessary, all applications supporting the Electricity North West business. Wipro will also leverage its global remote infrastructure management to provide a fully managed IT Services based on the ITIL v3 Service Integration model.

Andy Funnell, CIO, Electricity North West said “We believe Wipro`s demonstration of a strong industry competency, a mature global delivery model, alignment with our near-term and long-term objectives and a compelling value proposition made Wipro the supplier of our choice to enable IT separation and support our business strategy over a 5 year horizon.“

Anand Padmanabhan, senior VP and Head – energy & utilities, Wipro Technologies said “We are privileged to partner with Electricity North West on their strategic journey of IT separation. This opportunity extends our footprint in the UK Energy and Utilities industry and positions us as a partner of choice on engagements involving Transformation and end-to-end Managed Services. This deal underscores Wipro`s leadership position in the Energy and Utilities space in the UK market.“

Shares of Wipro declined Rs 7.55, or 1.77%, to settle at Rs 419.60. The total volume of shares traded was 168,512 at the BSE (Friday).

Source:http://www.myiris.com/newsCentre/storyShow.php?fileR=20101029180709194&dir=2010/10/29&secID=livenews

President Benigno S. Aquino III paid a visit to a Filipino-owned business process outsourcing (BPO) company as part of his two-day state visit to Vietnam which ends Wednesday.

The President arrived at the SPi Global headquarters at the 3rd floor of the De Tech Building along Pham Hung Road in this city’s Tu Liem district at around 9:30 a.m.

He was accompanied by Foreign Affairs Secretary Alberto Romulo, Trade Secretary Gregory Domingo, Finance Secretary Cesar Purisima, PMS head Julia Abad, CHED chair Patricia Licuanan, Defense Secretary Voltaire Gazmin and
Presidential Communications Development and Strategic Planning Office Secretary Ramon Carandang.

SPi vice president Patricia Bales briefed the President on the operations of the company, one of the world’s largest and most diversified BPO companies in the industry.

SPi Global is a leading full-service BPO provider with offices and facilities in 24 locations in North America, Europe and Asia.

Its employee base of 14,000 help deliver a wide range of Knowledge Process, Customer Relationship Management and Health Information solutions to diversified markets including financial, healthcare, legal and publishing services to its 500 company-clients worldwide.

Founded in Manila in 1980, SPi Global started out as SPi Technologies and offered content outsourcing services to Fortune 500 companies.

In July 2006, ePLDT, a wholly-owned subsidiary of the Philippine Long Distance Telephone Company acquired 100 percent share of SPi Technologies. It then created the legal entity SPi Global Holding, Inc. under which two operating entities: SPi Technologies, Inc. and ePLDT Ventus, Inc. were
integrated.

Bales said SPi remains committed to spurring regional trade and investment and spreading the Filipino spirit of excellence and pride across Asia, particularly in Southeast Asian.

“Through our people, services and innovation, we hope to contribute to nation-building, economic growth, regional prosperity and global competitiveness,” Bales reported.

After the short presentation, the President was given a brief tour of the company’s work area and was shown the various work loads of its employees by SPi director Li Thi Deu Linh.

The Vietnam operations of SPi were established in 2007 in support of its Philippine operations.

Its roster of 500 employees help in providing its clients with data conversion services for publishers and universities in the United States and Europe as well as video coding services to its growing clientele.

Source:http://www.isria.com/pages/28_October_2010_151.php