IBM's India hiring binge continues
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The work force at International Business Machines Corp. grew 8 percent in 2006, with most of the rise coming in India, where the technology company has been on a hiring binge in recent years.
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Indian chief information officers (CIOs) are finding it harder to recruit staff because of large-scale hiring by the countryâs outsourcing industry, a Gartner researcher said Monday.
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(InfoWorld) - It may now be the turn of Indian companies to offshore outside India their IT services requirements. Indian CIOs will have to consider outsourcing offshore, because of the shortage of IT skills in the country, and inadequate services standards of local service providers, according to research firm Gartner Inc. Indian companies have been looking at India alone for outsourcing, said a spokesman for Gartner India on Tuesday, who asked not to be named. They will now have to look at other locations like Singapore, Hong Kong, and even the U.S., he added. The services offshore will come at a premium to Indian prices, but will at least ensure that Indian CIOs get quality services, the spokesman said. Demand for skilled IT personnel as a result of initiatives like the Indian government's recent national e-governance program (NEGP), and resource-hungry Indian offshore service providers, are outstripping local supply, according to Gartner. Rapid economic growth in India is exacerbating the problem, and local chief information officers areÂ finding it difficult to manage the shortage of skilled local IT resources as internal business units become even more demanding in the area of IT requirements and schedules, the research firm added. Indiaâs gross domestic product (GDP) grew 9.2 percent in the countryâs fiscal year to March. A recent Gartner survey conducted among more than 1,400 CIOs worldwide showed that IT budgets in India had the highest growth of 16.19 percent, compared with an average of 3.16 percent in the rest of the world. Gartner warned in February thatÂ the problem for user organizations in India may only get worse as outsourcing companies start hiring business line managers from user organizations to build their vertical industry expertise. As large Indian outsourcers grow in revenue by 30 to 40 percent each year, they will hire business managers from the banking, manufacturing, and retail industries, that bring the business knowledge that can be integrated into their services offerings, it added. The focus of Indian outsourcers is primarily on markets in the U.S. and Europe where margins are far higher than in India, according to Gartner. Multinational services companies have targeted outsourcing deals by large Indian companies but the focus so far has been on very large deals, Gartner said in February. If Indian CIOs outsource work offshore, that may get Indian companies to try and reverse the trend, the Gartner spokesman said. An alternative to offshore outsourcing is for Indian CIOs to work with second and third-tier providers in India who are interested in local business, said the Gartner spokesman. The right provider may be able to provide domestic resources and perhaps a higher level of attention to issues and demands, he added. Â
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IBM Corp. has set up a new application services facility in India's north-eastern state of West Bengal, in a city that has emerged as one of the country's key software and services hubs.
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(InfoWorld) - Indian chief information officers (CIOs) are finding it harder to recruit staff because of large-scale hiring by the countryâs outsourcing industry, a Gartner researcher said Monday. Indiaâs top IT services providers, focused on the global market, are regarded as the best employers, and get the best IT staff in the country, said Partha Iyengar, research vice president at Gartner, in a conference call. Indian user organizations are hence finding it very difficult to attract and retain technical staff, particular in the middle management, Iyengar said. A large number of Indian and multinational services companies have set up services delivery operations in India, and hire staff by the thousands each quarter. The problem for user organizations may only get worse as outsourcing companies start hiring business line managers as well to build their vertical industry expertise, Iyengar added. As large Indian outsourcers grow in revenue by 30 to 40 percent each year, they will hire business managers from the banking, manufacturing, and retail industries, bringing business knowledge that can be integrated into their services offerings, he added. This movement of business managers from the user industry to outsourcers will make it more difficult for CIOs to complete projects, as companies will have fewer business staff available to participate in the project, according to Gartner. India is fastÂ emerging as a key marketÂ in the Asia-Pacific region for outsourcing contracts, according to outsourcing consultancy firm, Technology Partners International Inc. (TPI) in Houston, Texas. Of the total value of contracts awarded in the region last year, Indian customers accounted for 24.8 percent, TPI said. That puts the country ahead of China with a 4.4 percent share, but still behind Australia at 32.4 percent and Japan at 26.8 percent, Peter Allan, a partner at TPI said Monday. Faced with shortage of staff, Indian user organizations are looking to outsourcing IT functions. But Indian outsourcing companies have not shown great interest in this business, as they are more focused on more lucrative business abroad, Gartnerâs Iyengar said. Multinational service providers like IBM andÂ AccentureÂ have bagged some of the larger contracts, but that still leaves a large number of Indian companies with smaller outsourcing contracts, who canât find a good service provider, Iyengar added. Indian IT spending is growing at a five-year compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 14.8 percent, the highest in the Asia-Pacific region, to over $36 billion by 2009, Gartner said. This increase comes from rising expectations from businesses for IT to play a larger role in growth, efficiency and competitive advantage, it added.
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HYDERABAD, India  - Microsoft Corp. will hire  several hundred new staff at its new Indian campus in the next  year, its chief executive said on Monday, in a move aimed at  strengthening its presence in Asia's fourth-biggest economy.
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Shortage of IT skills and inadequate Internet service may lead Indian companies to look to U.S. and other countries for outsourcing.
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IBM has introduced new procedures to evaluate its staff in India with an eye to improving quality, with staff that don&#39;t make the grade being asked to leave.
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As blue chip companies in developed marketsÂ scramble to outsourceÂ high-cost jobs to low-cost countries, one of the world's biggest technology companies -- IBMÂ -- seems content to keep more than 1,800 highly trained, well-paid IT engineers at its R&D (research and development) lab in BÃ¶blingen, Germany.
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Only 147,000 to go IBM has shed another 1,573 jobs as part of an ongoing push to thin its services organization.â¦
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(InfoWorld) - The emerging nations of Brazil, China, India, and Russia together represented five percent of IBM's second-quarter revenue, and the vendor is looking for those revenue levels to double over the next four years. "These emerging countries are among the fastest growing IT markets in world -- and we're investing to capture growth," Mark Loughridge, IBM's chief financial officer, told analysts during a Wednesday conference call to discussÂ the vendor's latest financial results for the three months ended June 30. IBM's revenue in China and India grew over 30 percent in the second quarter of fiscal 2007 compared with the same period a year ago. In Brazil, IBM's revenue rose nine percent, while the vendor's revenue in Russia rocketed by 52 percent versus the year-ago quarter. Asia-Pacific helped IBM's global services operation continue the return to health it began to demonstrate in the first quarter. Previously, IBM's overall services business had shown little or stagnant growth. Second-quarter revenue growth for the unit was up 10 percent to $13.1 billion on the year-ago quarter. Eleven deals signed in the quarter were larger than $100 million, according to Loughridge. IBM is also seeing more revenue growth from its existing customer base as it invests in the vendor's services, he said. In the area of strategic outsourcing, IBM saw particularly strong revenue growth in India with an increase of nearly 150 percent. Looking at IBM's services business as a whole in India, Loughridge was extremely bullish. "Weâre beating the local competition on their own turf," he said, citing deals with Delhi Airport and the Indian Tax Authority as well as an expansion of an existing agreement with mobile carrier Idea Cellular. Elsewhere in the world, IBM's global surveillance services business is performing strongly. Loughridge cited implementations of surveillance infrastructure at Chicago Transit Authority and the Unicredito Bank. It wasn't all good news. IBM's systems and technology business took a hit from lower demand than had been expected for chips to power games consoles. "We do have opportunities in other high-growth segments, including wired and wireless communications," Loughridge said. Sales of the vendor's external disk storage were disappointingly flat. On the plus side, IBM experienced very strong performance in its tape storage operation where revenue grew 19 percent. The vendor's System z mainframe continued to do very well driven by customers looking to consolidate servers and embrace virtualization. It's a trend, Loughridge said, that's leading users to purchase enterprise-level hardware. "This [z] box saves customers a lot of money; it's a strong economic proposition," he added. IBM's System i servers again performed poorly, but Loughridge hoped that situation will change once IBM refreshes the family with its Power6 processors, which recently made their debut in the vendor's System p midrange servers. On the software side, IBM experienced another "very strong quarter," Loughridge said, with the vendor's WebSphere middleware and its Tivoli systems, storage and security management products all performing very well. Overall, Loughridge was a happy man. "This was a really great quarter," he said. "I think every CFO waits for a quarter like this."
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The U.S. high-tech work force grew  by 2 percent last year but demand for computer programmers,  tech-support specialists and other high-tech workers continues  to erode, according to a survey released on Wednesday.
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As British unions cry foul over an exodus of jobs to Asia, one Indian information technology firm is bucking the trend, hiring 250 more staff at a call centre in Northern Ireland.
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Although India still gets the bulk of U.S. offshoring dollars, the number of countries companies are eyeing is expanding as they seek specific IT skills and follow-the-sun delivery.
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Indian software companies, which have been busy conquering the world and neglecting their backyard, should not continue doing so. This is because the domestic market is going to grow into a huge opportunity
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India's software exports are on track to grow by 30 percent in the year to March 2005, despite attempts in the key U.S. market to discourage outsourcing and protect jobs, the industry's head said on Monday.
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India News, Hyderabad, World&#39;s largest software maker Microsoft Corp is hiring more staff at its new India campus - its largest outside the US - near here, the company&#39;s chief executive Steve Ballmer said Monday.