Source: www.business-standard.com

In the news is the recent inking of a multi-year IT contract by New York-based publishing giant Simon & Schuster, Inc. (S&S) and Indian IT major - Cognizant Technologies.

Under the agreement, Cognizant is to provide Simon & Schuster with end-to-end information technology infrastructure management services, including, help desk, network management, server management, application infrastructure support, and desktop support.

However, there is no information on either the size of the contract or its duration, as Cognizant officials declined to furnish any details to the media.

The agreement that will see Cognizant providing end-to-end infrastructure management and data centre operations services for S&S, will also include management of 200-servers, 1,400-desktops, as well as, management of mission-critical applications across the company’s locations.

Francisco D’Souza, Cognizant President and CEO confirms his firm has successfully migrated S&S’s hardware and software onto a Microsoft platform, adding: “We will continue to meet Simon & Schuster’s future needs by delivering superior network and applications performance, while effectively transferring our know-how to the company’s personnel.”

Cognizant, with its IT infrastructure management division is head-quartered in Bangalore will provide services delivery to all of S&S’s offices out of Bangalore, New York, and its two offices in New Jersey.

Source:www.telegraphindia.com

Vodafone today completed its acquisition of Hutch Essar, paying $180 million less than the original offer price.

The UK-based world’s largest mobile operator paid a discounted price of $10.9 billion in cash to Hong Kong-based Hutchison Telecom International Limited (HTIL) against $11.08 billion announced earlier.

The lower payment of $180 million reflects retention and closing adjustments as agreed with Hutchison Telecom.

It also included provisions for a previously announced settlement pact with Indian partner Essar.

“I am delighted we have completed this important transaction and can move on to the process of integration,” Vodafone CEO Arun Sarin said.

“India is a tremendously exciting, fast moving market and I am confident that Hutch Essar’s business will have a major contribution to the Vodafone group’s revenues in the coming years,” Sarin added.

“The transaction was completed on May 8,” HTIL, which sold its entire stake in the company, said in a release.

The stage is now set for Vodafone to start its operations in India, which is witnessing an addition of five million new mobile subscribers every month.

Hutch Essar will become Vodafone Essar over a period of time.

Sources said Vodafone will have to pay an additional interest to HTIL for the three- month delay in closing the deal. However, when contacted, Vodafone officials refused to divulge details.

The estimated pre-tax gain from the sale is expected to be $9 billion to HTIL.

The net cash inflow to HTIL before payment of the settlement amount is about $10.83 billion.

HTIL is expected to declare a special dividend of 6.75 HK dollars per share following the completion of the necessary formalities.

Commenting on the transaction, Hutchison Telecom chairman Canning Fok said: “Today marks the conclusion of a successful venture for Hutchison Telecom.”

“We exit the Indian market as one of the best capitalised telecom companies in the region which will enable us to react swiftly to new opportunities and to accelerate growth in our existing markets,” he said.

Earlier, the deal was cleared by the foreign investment promotion board, which looked into allegations of breach of foreign direct investment norms in the company.

India allows a maximum fdi of 74 per cent in the telecom sector.

Vodafone acquired 52 per cent direct stake of htil in hutch-essar, while indian partner essar holds 33 per cent and three minority shareholders the remaining 15 per cent.

Source: Economic Times

First BPO / ITeS / IT / KPO / LPO et al, now it is the turn of the Indian publishing industry, an industry that is poised for big times, especially in the outsourcing space. In a recent study, ValueNotes Database has just released, it predicts the off-shore publishing sector in India to be worth $1.46-billion by the year 2010, growing at an estimated rate of 35%. Indeed, this is a sharp increase from publishing outsourcing’s current revenue of $440-million. What’s more, to add a further note of cheer to this welcome news, the sector is expected to employ 74,000 people in the next three years.

The study conducted by Pune-based think-tank reveals over the last couple of years, publishing off-shoring revenues have grown faster than the number of jobs that have been generated in the sector, which grew slightly slower than estimated. Compared to an earlier projected estimate of 35% growth per annum, manpower in the publishing outsourcing sector actually grew at about 31% to reach 26,000 in 2006, even while, revenues grew by over 45%.

This demonstrates increasing levels of automation and a shift to higher value services. Arun Jethmalani, CEO – ValueNotes, explains: “Companies are rapidly adding high-end service capabilities and this will enable them to bill higher rates in an era of intense competition, margin pressures and rupee appreciation.”

Currently, there are over 100-players of various sizes in this space in India, and their combined employee headcount totalled to 26,000 in 2006. Some of the big publishing outsourcing players in India include Spi, OfficeTiger, Aptara, MacMillan India, Newgen, Integra, Infomedia.

And, the range of off-shored services provided from India include: editorial, data operations, design and IT, with each of them beginning to achieve varying levels of off-shoring maturity. According to the study, the strongest capability in the Indian off-shoring space is within the operations space, followed by editorial services.

Based on its exhaustive primary research and analysis, ValueNotes has identified a ‘list of frontrunners’, with the potential to emerge as winners within their chosen niches. A vast majority, or approximately 96% of the India-based vendors have capabilities to service the academic publishing segment. While, around 56% - 39% of the vendors have the capabilities to handle educational publishing and legal publishing respectively. As Aradhana Kolhatkar, co-author of the report says: “Interestingly, though bulk of the work will also thrive, helped by sub-contracting from large vendors.”