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.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: in.reuters.com

MUMBAI (Reuters) - Legal process outsourcing is rapidly growing and is expected to become a $4 billion industry globally by 2015 with India occupying a significant chunk of it, industry players and analysts said.

U.S.-based Brown & Wilson Group Inc in its 2008 Black Book of Outsourcing has estimated the current value of legal outsourcing at $80 million, with more than three-fourths of it based in India.

“That is a very conservative estimate. I think it will grow faster as the market potential is huge,” said Suhas Tuljapurkar, who was formerly a partner at Mumbai law firm DSK Legal and left it to found Legasis Services Pvt Ltd.

Legal process outsourcing is an industry in which in-house legal departments or organisations outsource legal work from areas where it is costly to carry out.

“Law firms are focussing to increase pressure from their clients to decrease costs and retain profits per partner,” the Brown & Wilson report said, adding that every Indian homegrown law firm is building its own case for outsourcing.

The main areas of growth are discovery and litigation support, contract and document review services, and legal analytics and due diligence.

Source: www.pocketgamer.biz

Jon Jordan - UK-based games localisation, testing and quality assurance specialist Babel Media, which counts mobile companies such Vodafone, Glu, EA Mobile and Gameloft among its range of console, online and handheld clients, has been snapped up Quatrro BPO Solutions. It’s the sixth acquisition for the expanding outsourcing giant, which was founded by Indian entepreneur Raman Roy and is headquartered in Gurgaon, India.

The size of the deal wasn’t announced but is thought to be in the region of $30 million, and was funded partly by cash and partly by debt.

“This is our biggest acquisition in terms of profitability, topline and bottom line and I see this move as an intergral part of Quatrro’s agenda of ‘Going Beyond the Existing’ and building strategically important businesses in undeserved and uncontested market spaces. With this acquisition, we have bought India into the gaming testing and localisation space,” said Raman Roy.

As part of the transaction, Babel’s co-founder Algy Williams, will take the role of a non executive Quatrro director.

Babel employs over 500 staff and has offices in Brighton, Los Angeles, Montreal and New Delhi. Its mobile clients include Vodafone, Player X, Bandai Namco, THQ Wireless, Disney, EA Mobile, I-play, Orange, Motorola, Eidos, SEGA, Sony Pictures, Gameloft and Glu.

It offers services such as WAP portal assessment, Java and BREW porting, translation, functional and localisation QA, certification and deployment, and has ported over 2000 builds for North American and European clients in the past 12 months.

Source: www.thehindubusinessline.com

IT services provider Satyam Computer on Monday announced that Satyam BPO, its business process outsourcing arm, has been ranked second among the world’s leading BPO vendors in Brown-Wilson Group’s Black Book of Outsourcing.

Satyam BPO was also ranked fourth on the knowledge process outsourcing vendors list. More than 4,000 organisations were evaluated in compiling the lists.

For the third consecutive year, Satyam has been ranked among the top 10 in Brown-Wilson Group’s Black Book of Outsourcing. In 2007 and 2006, Satyam BPO, formerly Nipuna, had been ranked in several categories including KPO, energy and utilities.

Growth areas win

The Chief Executive Officer of Satyam BPO, Mr Venkatesh Roddam, in a statement said “The categories in which we have been ranked this year (BPO and KPO) are the key growth areas that we have been focusing on. Recognition from the Brown-Wilson Group reflects our capabilities to offer transformation services through superior delivery.”