India eyes to tap the rising RIM opportunity
posted in Outsourcing to India |Source: sify.com
Indian IT service providers are poised to eke out a larger share of the global $28 billion addressable remote infrastructure management (RIM) services in the next five years, on account of cheaper labour and deeper skill-sets, according to a recent report jointly prepared by Nasscom and advisory firm Mckinsey.
Indian IT service providers already account for about 60% of the global RIM services. RIM, a general term used for the management of various IT services such as applications, network, IT helpdesk, software deployment and support, forms a part of the broader ITBPO outsourcing industry. And industry watchers believe it’s growing.
IT companies such as Wipro, Patni, Satyam, TCS, Infosys and HCL have been building their capability towards this opportunity through acquisitions. Some of the notable acquisitions were Wipro acquisition of the US-based Infocrossing, Satyam’s acquisition of the UK-based Nitro Solutions, Patni’s acquisition of InteQ and IBM’s acquisition of the India-based Network Solutions.
A Wipro spokesperson said, “Wipro undertakes the infrastructure management for business verticals such as manufacturing, energy and utilities, BFSI, retail, and telecom.”
Wipro employs over 13,500 professionals for its RIM business. A high interest shown by employees in RIM is because of the challenges and opportunities it provides. “RIM provides a basket of opportunities that helps an individual grow technically as well as seek managerial positions in organisations such as shift leads, operations managers, service delivery heads etc.,” said the Wipro spokesperson.
In the current economic scenario RIM is however looked with different objectives. “In the face of the economic downturn the clients in the US are looking at RIM on a cost arbitrage aspect, while those in Europe look at it as their growth enabler,” said Stephen Ward, AVP, infrastructure management services at Hyderabad-based Satyam.
About of 24% of Sayam’s workforce handles its RIM business. As part of RIM services it provides managed security and network services to more than 100 clients globally. The report states that India’s strong position in infrastructure services delivery “draws upon cost competitiveness, high quality delivery, and well established process transition and hybrid delivery capabilities”.
A Nasscom strategic review 2008 had earlier mentioned that while Brazil and Eastern Europe prove to be twice in terms of cost of outsourcing and China proves to be 30% more expensive as compared to India.
