Source:www.computerworld.com.sg

India’s largest outsourcer Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) has set up a global delivery center in Guadalajara, Mexico, with plans to hire up to 5,000 staff there over the next five years.

Having a center in Mexico helps TCS, of Mumbai, as it will be closer to U.S. customers and on a similar time zone, said Pradipta Bagchi, a spokesman for TCS said on Thursday.

The South American market also provides a significant opportunity for TCS because of a large number of regional companies investing in information technology and related services, Bagchi said. TCS currently has about 5,000 employees in South America, which service more than 150 clients there. It operates global delivery centers in Brazil, Mexico, and Uruguay, besides a business process outsourcing services center in Chile.

Indian outsourcing companies are grappling with the appreciation of the Indian rupee against the U.S. dollar, as well as rising labor costs. India’s National Association of Software and Service Companies (NASSCOM) has said that the 8 to 9 percent appreciation of the rupee over the last three months is worrisome. The United States is the largest market for Indian outsourcers.

TCS’ expansion in Mexico led to speculation that the company may be looking for alternative locations to India. Staff in India is still cheaper than in Mexico, and the company has no plans to scale down its operations in India, Bagchi said.

A number of Indian companies have set up operations in South America and Eastern Europe to offer a near-shore option to their customers in the United States and Europe.

Indian companies are also expanding in other countries to look for new talent pools, as it gets tougher to hire staff in large numbers in India. Satyam Computer Services, an outsourcer in Hyderabad, said last year it was expanding in China, Malaysia, and other locations to tap regional markets and supplement its Indian operations.

TCS and India’s second largest outsourcer, Infosys Technologies, have also set up operations in China.

China has, however, fallen short of expectations as an offshore location, according to Forrester Research. Two years ago, China was viewed as a key challenger to India because of its large number of engineering graduates and the support of the Chinese government to establish it as a key offshore location, Forrester said. But after an initial burst of momentum, there has been relatively little evidence of the country’s success, the research firm added.

TCS’ new center at Mexico will primarily offer software development, Bagchi said. The center will serve clients in Mexico and the United States, he added.

Source:www.dailyherald.com

When David San Filippo decided to create a tribute video in honor of his sister’s wedding, he could have gotten a recommendation from a friend or looked up video editors in the phone book. Instead, he did what big corporations have been doing for more than a decade: sent the work offshore.

On the Internet, San Filippo located a graphic artist in Romania who agreed to do the whole thing for $59. The result was a splashy two-minute video with a space theme and “Star Wars” soundtrack. It won raves at the wedding.

Offshore outsourcing has transformed the way U.S. companies do business. Now, some early adopters are figuring out how to tap overseas workers for personal tasks.

Americans are turning to a vast talent pool in India, China, Bangladesh and elsewhere for jobs ranging from landscape architecture to kitchen remodeling and math tutoring. They’re outsourcing some surprisingly small jobs, including getting a dress designed, creating address labels for wedding invitations or finding a good deal on a hotel room, for example.

Such “personal offshoring” is still new and represents a tiny fraction of the more than $20 billion overseas outsourcing industry. But management consultants and economists say it’s likely to evolve as offshore workers identify the opportunities.

Thanks to instant messaging, computer scanners and e-mail attachments, any work that doesn’t require meeting in person has the potential to be done overseas.

The approach relies on the same model that drives corporate outsourcing: labor arbitrage, or benefiting from the wage differential between U.S. workers and those in developing countries. In the U.S., tutoring services charge $40 to $60 an hour for math help. Some skilled tutors in India are paid $2 to $3 an hour.

Sending personal work offshore requires Internet proficiency, and some patience as well. Though a few firms have begun tailoring their services to consumers, most deal primarily with businesses. Tapping this bargain work force means knowing about the online bazaars where workers abroad compete to bid for small projects.

Some big free-lancing sites include Elance.com, Guru.com and Rentacoder.com. In a recent study on the growth of offshoring services to small businesses and homes, market researcher Evalueserve found more than 90 such online marketplaces, with 500,000 vendors from low-wage countries using them.

Consumers must also be able to recognize when a routine task can be done digitally, and across time zones.

Earlier this year, Dan Frey went in search of an artist to illustrate a children’s book his mother had written for the grandkids about her life growing up in New York City.

He thought about finding a student from a local art school, but then it dawned on him that he could outsource it without leaving his house. The job didn’t necessarily require a face-to-face meeting — he could just e-mail the draft.

He logged on to Guru. Within a week, 80 bids had come in from countries such as Lebanon, Ukraine and Malaysia. To narrow the field, he had 10 finalists send him sample drawings depicting a young girl.

The woman he finally hired lives in the Philippines. He says her drawings, styled after Japanese anime, were more cheerful than other entries, and he was impressed by her polished portfolio. She offered to do 25 drawings for $300 — what some others wanted for a single illustration.

“I was kind of amazed at how easy it was,” says the 36-year-old sales and marketing consultant. He says his mother was “overwhelmed” when she saw the finished product.

It isn’t always easy to evaluate a vendor. Language gaps can lead to misunderstandings, and if projects involve revisions, they could take more time — and cost more in long-distance bills — than they’re worth.

When reporters tried outsourcing personal tasks, they were offered a range of prices, making it difficult to know what they were getting.

Some labor experts are skeptical that this kind of outsourcing will ever go beyond a small group of enthusiasts. And though it’s hardly the political hot-button that’s provoked industries like manufacturing and information technology, many are stumbling into their own versions of corporate responsibility in terms of working conditions and fair wages.

Architects, accountants, landscape designers and other professionals say it’s too soon to tell if outsourcing poses a threat to their business. But American free-lancers say they’re getting hit.

Tanisha Coffey, who does small writing jobs through her Atlanta-area company, Scribe Etc., says while she asks 50 cents a word for a long article, some offshore firms charge $3 for the whole thing.

Source: www.business-standard.com

In a recent announcement, Cybernet-SlashSupport (CSS) informs it has been chosen as IBM’s preferred partner for deploying its new ‘Open Client’ solutions in the Indian and US markets, promoting and offering services around IBM solutions out of its strong off-shore base in Chennai.

Helping customers deploy the solution, CSS will offer services, such as, jump-start, end-user segmentation, value assessment, application migration, pilot management and deployment, and on-going support.

Without giving details on the duration or size of the deal, CSS confirms it will be providing a dedicated team to support collaborative solutions and middle ware on Linux.

Involved in a working relationship with IBM for over a decade, CSS has been especially involved in providing interoperability and other services on IBM’s open source platforms, including executing projects for some of the topmost global firms.

Shiva Ramani, Co-founder and CEO of CSS issued a statement saying becoming IBM’s preferred partner was well aligned with his firm’s mission of helping enterprise clients drive down IT operation costs, while improving service levels.

With a staff count of close to 5,000-people and with offices in North America, Europe, and Asia, besides Chennai, April 2007 saw Goldman Sachs leading a $25-million investment round in CSS.