Source: www.asianage.com

IT and BPO company Mphasis will concentrate on tier II and tier III cities to scale up its operations in the country.

The company, which has almost doubled its strength since its acquisition by EDS in 2006, currently has 28,000 employees in India and is planning to add another 8,000 employees this year.

Mr Elango R., chief hu-man resource officer, Mphasis said that as the company adds 1,000 employees every month, over the next year, it is targeting to fill up most of its talent requirement from tier II and tier III cities.

Apart from the cost advantage, he said expansion in tier II cities would help the company to tap the largely untapped workforce.

According to a Nasscom report, India’s seven dominant IT cities, where 90 per cent of the 2-million talent pool reside, may see their share slipping to 60-75 per cent if jobs are shifted to tier II and tier III cities.

The company already has its business process outsourcing centres in a few tier II cities and is looking to expand both the BPO and application centre network to Coimbatore, Tiruchirapalli, Madurai, Calicut, Kozhikode, Jaipur, Bhuban-eshwar, and Rourkela.

Pointing out that Bangalore, which had been a tier II city until ten years ago, got elevated to the status of a metro by 2005, he said that the company wanted to take the early bird’s advantage.

Source: www.telecomtiger.com

Virgin Mobile USA has signed an agreement with IBM under which the telecom firm will leverage from IBM’s vast telecommunication industry experience and state-of-the-art IT resources.

Under the terms of the agreement, IBM will develop new and differentiated wireless applications and service offerings and also provide Virgin Mobile with data center outsourcing and application management services including maintenance and development.

Commenting on the agreement, Jonathan Marchbank, Chief Operations Officer, Virgin Mobile USA said “With over 5 million customers, the scale we”ve achieved now puts us in a position to take advantage of IBM’s proven best practices, scope and unparalleled experience in running and building IT infrastructure.”

Source: www.siliconrepublic.com

John Kennedy - Ireland has nothing to fear from outsourcing to lower cost countries and can still achieve its knowledge economy objectives.

A seminar held by Sogeti-owned Insight Test Services heard Ireland needs to embrace and not fear outsourcing to lower cost countries if it is to succeed as a knowledge economy in the new globally competitive environment.

Kavanagh’s comments come in the wake of news that Hibernian Insurance is to outsource 580 jobs to India.

“If Irish technology and indeed financial services companies are to move up the value chain, then it makes no sense to locate low-value jobs in a high-cost centre such as Ireland,” Kavanagh explained.

“In order to compete on global markets, we must be cost-competitive. Trying to hang onto jobs that can be more cost effectively carried out elsewhere is a false economy.”

Kavanagh said that in the IT services sector the opportunity is for Irish companies to help manage the outsourcing process on behalf of Irish customers. He said Sogeti planned to employ 200 high-level personnel in Ireland by the end of 2008.

“At the same time, Sogeti operates a 500-person testing centre in India. This ensures the appropriate quality assurance activities are carried out locally by Sogeti specialists interacting with the customer.

“While at the same time, customers can benefit from the cost advantages of having some activities suitable for offshore execution carried out in India under the direction of the Irish Sogeti team of specialists.”

Earlier this year, Insight Test Services was acquired by Sogeti, one of the world’s largest providers of local IT professional and test services. Insight Test Services, provides consulting, managed services, training and resourcing services to over 80 clients.

Source: economictimes.indiatimes.com

MUMBAI: Non-voice business process outsourcing company Tricom India on Thursday said it has acquired US-based Pacific Data Centres Inc for $2.25 million (about Rs 9.71 crore).

Tricom has acquired PDC through its US subsidiary Tricom Document Management Inc, the company said in a filing to the Bombay Stock Exchange.

“The purchase of Pacific Data Centres is another major acquisition and markedly increases business offerings in the non voice BPO sector,” Tricom India Managing Director Chetan Kothari said.

The acquisition would enhance the capabilities of Tricom to address the needs of clients whose data cannot be sent offshore, he added.

Further, the company said it has also completed the acquisition of health insurance firm Godrej Global Solutions.

Shares of Tricom closed at Rs 100.45, down 9.95 per cent on the BSE.

Source: www.hindu.com

Kolkata (PTI): The Indian lab of IBM has brought out a next generation solution to protect against theft of sensitive data from call centres, a major concern of the growing Indian outsourcing market.

“We have developed a solution that offers advanced data masking technology, which is a speech analytics tool that detects and masks private and sensitive information, both audio and onscreen without disrupting customer services or business operations,” IBM India Research Laboratory Director Guruduth Banavar told PTI.

The technology solution has been internally code named AudioZapper.

Banavar claimed the solution, developed after 18 months of intensive research in India, was the only solution in the global marketplace that addressed complete security concerns of a call centre.

“There has been some attempts on data masking of conversation but it did not prove to be worthwhile. The IBM solution offers the industry the required protection of confidential data such as credit card numbers, personal identification numbers (PIN), social security numbers, from getting into wrong hands,” he said.

Asked about the cost of the technology for call centres and business projections, Banavar said after development the product would be transferred to the marketing arm of the company.