Source:www.business-standard.com

Tech Mahindra, a global end-to-end IT solutions and services provider to the telecom industry and Taiwanese major ASUStek Computer Inc have signed an outsourcing agreement for developing software for its nextGen products in the communication segment.

Presently, Tech Mahindra is working on the pilot which will incorporate the framework and process structure for future workflow between the two companies.

“This is a multi-year agreement for developing an embedded system and features for its ASUS nextGen handsets that will be mass manufactured in the next 2-3 years,” said Manan Panchal, director, Embedded Systems Practice, Tech Mahindra.

ASUS offers complete range of products across computers, consumer electronics and communications. It has in the past offshored to local Taiwanese companies and this is the first time it is outsourcing to India.

“With this partnership we are looking beyond vanilla development and hope to create disruptive innovations like the iPod or iPhone,” said Taiming Parng, chief technology officer — Core Technology Centre, ASUS told Business Standard.

Parng also expressed his intention to extend the partnership beyond the communications space to cover its consumer electronics and computers space.

“Depending on the success of the pilot we could outsource up to 80 per cent of our software development from Taiwan to India, leaving just 20 per cent of the core development in Taiwan,” said Parng. However, he did raise concerns for increasing costs. “We understand that India offers value addition, but pricing is important,” he said.

With expected revenues of $23 billion in 2007, the $16.5 billion company has 4,000 employees in R&D and development in Taiwan, 1500 people in R&D and a workforce of 70,000 people for manufacturing in China.

“We have chosen Tech Mahindra after an entire year of deliberation which involved visiting all the top software services companies in India,” said Parng while sharing that Tech Mahindra’s strong offshore presence in Taiwan was what won in the company’s favour.

Source:timesofindia.indiatimes.com

Wipro Technologies is making its biggest ever acquisition. It is buying New Jersey-based Infocrossing for $600 million (Rs 2,460 crore) in an all cash deal. It has signed a definitive agreement with Infocrossing to acquire the latter paying $18.70 (six months average price) per each of its fully diluted 32 million shares, with 13% premium.

Infocrossing focusses on infrastructure management, enterprise application and business process outsourcing services. The company that employs 900 people in five different data centres — New Jersey, California, Georgia, Arizona and Nebraska — provides end-to-end remote infrastructure management solutions like server management, mainframe outsourcing, network management and security services to around 200 clients. During the fiscal ended March 3I, 2007, it posted revenues of $229 million with a net profit of $8.5 million. It has net assets of $300 million.

Wipro president Suresh Vaswani said the acquisition will be conducted through a tender offer, which will follow the merger of Infocrossing with Wipro subsidiary, Wipro Inc. The tender offer is subject to a number of customary closing conditions, including regulatory approvals, and is expected to be completed by December while it is expected to reflect on revenues from the fourth quarter onwards.

Wipro has made a series of small acquisitions around the world in the past few years to fill gaps in its portfolio, a process that Wipro chairman Azim Premji has called the ‘string of pearls’ strategy. But the Infocrossing acquisition is far bigger than any so far.

“The acquisition will help fill gaps in the managed infrastructure services space thereby creating additional markets for Wipro,” said Vaswani.

“This will also deepen our presence in the US. This acquisition will broaden our data centre and mainframe capabilities and position us uniquely in the remote infrastructure management space, which is a $70 billion market, a major chunk of the total IT infrastructure market of $150 billion.” It will also strengthen Wipro’s healthcare and BPO businesses in the US.