Ingres strikes deal with Satyam
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(InfoWorld) - Ingres Corp. Monday announced a global sales and marketing alliance with leading Indian consultancy and IT services company Satyam Computer Services Ltd. to attract more customers for its open-source database. Under the terms of the joint sales and marketing agreement, Satyam will establish an Ingres practice initially focused on meeting the systems integration needs of government, retail and pharmaceutical customers around the world. The two companies will also look for ways to appeal to more Indian users as open-source technologies become more popular in that country. Ingres officiallyÂ opened operations in India in October, appointing Vivek Bhatnagar, formerly with data integration software vendor Informatica Corp., as country director. TheÂ open-source database company had previously set up partnerships with other services providers with operations in India including Cognizant Technology Solutions Corp. and netCustomer Inc. The alliance with Satyam is part ofÂ Ingres' bid to grow its number of partners around the world, particularly in the systems integrator space, with more such SI partnerships on the cards in future. Ingres has pockets of customers, particularly in Australia and the U.K., dating back to its origins as a proprietary relational database player, then as part of the ASK Group, and later as part of CA Inc. AfterÂ becoming an independent entity in November 2005, Ingres has looked to grow its customer base globally especially in emerging markets like India, Brazil and Eastern Europe. Â
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Indian-born billionaire Lakshmi Mittal, who made a fortune buying mills from Algeria to Mexico, agreed to acquire Wilbur Ross&#39;s International Steel Group Inc.
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(InfoWorld) - Indian outsourcer WiproÂ is to develop open-source business software and offer system integration services around the open-source database from software vendor Ingres, which will be marketed jointly by the two companies. The tie-up with Wipro is one of a number of systems-integration partnerships that Ingres plans with Indian outsourcers, said Vivek Bhatnagar, Ingres' country director for India, on Wednesday. Last month, the companyÂ struck a deal with Satyam Computer Services, an outsourcer in Hyderabad, India, to meet the systems integration needs of government, retail, and pharmaceutical customers around the world. It also has partnerships with outsourcers in the U.S. that have operations in India, like Cognizant Technology Solutions, an IT services company in Teaneck, New Jersey. Indian outsourcers can influence their customers worldwide to use Ingres' open-source software, said Bhatnagar. Ingres can also refer some of its clients to Indian outsourcers that have a practice around Ingres' technologies, he added. Ingres is also planning tie-ups with multinational service providers that have services delivery from India, Bhatnagar said. Wipro of Bangalore is setting up an open-source Center of Excellence around Ingres' technology, the company announced Wednesday. The company will focus on software in the areas of business intelligence, content management, data warehousing, and business process management, Bhatnagar said. Wipro brings in the business expertise, while Ingres will provide the technology platform on which Wipro will be able to provide an open-source alternative to its enterprise customers, he added. Wipro's Ingres open source practice will also focus on the Indian market, where open source adoption is accelerating, Wipro said.
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(InfoWorld) - Indiaâs second largest outsourcer, Infosys Technologies, is considering a bid for French IT services company Capgemini, according to a newspaper report. The Times of India of Mumbai quoted an industry source on Friday as saying the move was a natural progression for a fast-growing Indian tech firm keen to make an impression on the global market. Infosys declined to comment on the reports. âWe do not comment on market rumors,â a spokeswoman for the company said Friday. However, Infosys, in Bangalore, indicated at itsÂ analyst conference in AprilÂ that it may consider an acquisition. An acquisition deal between Infosys and Capgemini is unlikely to happen, said Siddharth Pai, a partner at consultancy firm Technology Partners International in Houston, Texas. Infosys might acquire Capgemini to get access to European markets, where it doesn't have a large presence, but the cultural incompatibilities between the two companies are very high, he added. A number of Indian outsourcing companies including Tata Consultancy ServicesÂ (TCS) and WiproÂ have acquired companies abroad to increase their geographic reach and to focus on new industry sectors. Capgemini used acquisitions as way to win new business and add staff in India. Last year, the companyÂ acquired a 51 percent stakeÂ in Unilever India Shared Services, a subsidiary of European consumer goods maker Unilever Group. That business will become a wholly owned subsidiary of Capgemini by 2008. In February,Â Capgemini acquired Kanbay International, an IT services firm in Rosemont, Illinois, to boost its services delivery from India, and its business in the financial services sector. Infosys reported revenue of $3.1 billion for the fiscal year ended March 31 this year, and has forecast revenue of about $4 billion in its current fiscal year ending March 31 next year. The company had a market capitalization of $27 billion as of March 31. Capgemini is a larger company with revenue of $10 billion for its fiscal year ended December 31.
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(InfoWorld) - Indian outsourcer Satyam Computer ServicesÂ is setting up another development facility in China, its largest outside India. The new 2,500 seat facility will be located in the Nanjing Software Park, and will be operational in the next year, the company said Thursday. Satyam, of Hyderabad, announced in November that it willÂ increase its staff in ChinaÂ from around 400 to about 3,000 by 2008, in line with its strategy to use China as an alternate location to India to serve its global clients. It also announced in November that it was setting up a new software development center at the Guangzhou Software Park, with plans to have up to 1,000 staff at the facility by the end of 2008. Satyam set up its first Chinese development center in Shanghai in 2002. Since then it has set up a small development center in Dalian, and is also planning to set up a development center in Beijing where the company has a sales office. The company is setting up centers in a number of locations in China to tap into talent available in these various locations, as costs are lower in smaller cities, an executive said in November. Indian outsourcers like Infosys Technologies haveÂ set up development facilities in ChinaÂ to service the Chinese operations of multinational companies, and to address the local market and neighborhood markets like Japan and Hong Kong. Satyam announced in December that it was setting up a 2,000-seat softwareÂ development facility in MalaysiaÂ that will service its customers worldwide.
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(InfoWorld) - French IT services company CapgeminiÂ is acquiring a 51 percent stake in Unilever India Shared Services, a finance and accounting business process outsourcing (BPO) operation in India belonging to European consumer goods maker Unilever Group. The financial terms of the agreement were not disclosed. The acquisition of a majority stake by Capgemini in Unilever India Shared Services is the first step towards full acquisition of the company by 2008, said Baru Rao, chief executive officer of Capgemini India on Thursday. Unilever's continued investment in Unilever India Shared Services, also called Indigo, until 2008 is an indication of Unilever's commitment to giving the company business, Rao said. The decision of the consumer goods maker to divest from Indigo is in line with its strategy to pull out of noncore areas, Rao added. As part of the relationship between the two companies, Capgemini and Unilever have entered into a seven-year agreement to deliver finance and accounting BPO services to Unilever Group companies that are currently serviced by Indigo. The services will be delivered by Indigo's current staff, as well as staff from Capgemini who will operate out of a single entity, Rao said. Indigo is a provider of financial shared services and Sarbanes-Oxley Act compliance services to the Unilever Group worldwide. It has operations in Bangalore and Chennai, and has nearly 600 professionals, including about 75 Chartered Accountants, working in these centers. It currently serves Unilever companies in about 45 countries. The acquisition, which is expected to be completed by October, will help Capgemini increase quickly the number of staff it has working on finance and accounting BPO in India, Rao said. Currently, Capgemini's Indian operations have about 450 BPO staff of which about 50 are in finance and accounting BPO. Indigo will be an extension to Capgemini's current BPO delivery network in Poland, China, India, Australia, the U.S. and Canada, Capgemini said. For Indigo, the tie-up with Capgemini provides an opportunity to address customers outside the Unilever Group. Although Unilever continues as an investor in Indigo, all future investments in sales, infrastructure and staffing at Indigo will be done by Capgemini, Rao said. Unilever will not make any profit from the operation during the transition to full ownership by Capgemini, he added. Capgemini said earlier this year that it will make India its hub for offshore delivery of IT and BPO services. The company's Indian operation, which currently employs about 5,600 staff, will have 10,000 staff in India by the end of next year.
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(InfoWorld) - Indian outsourcer Satyam Computer Services is setting up a 2,000-seat software development facility in Malaysia that will service its customers worldwide. The move is in line with the company's strategy to have services centers in multiple countries, both to address regional markets and to draw on local talent. Although staff costs in Malaysia are higher than in India, capital costs are far lower because of the country's better infrastructure, Virender Aggarwal, director and senior vice president of Satyamâs operations in the Asia Pacific and Middle East, said on Thursday. âWe donât have to invest in captive power generation for exampleâ, he said, referring to Indiaâs chronic power problems. The center is in Cyberjaya, about 50 kilometers south of Kuala Lumpur, and will have 2,000 staff over the next four years, Satyam said. The company already has a delivery center in Kuala Lumpur with 150 staff. âWe have done large-scale hiring here, and we found the quality of staff to be very good,â Aggarwal said. As the cost of engineers and staff attrition rates in India go up, Satyamâs customers are keen on the company setting up operations in new locations, according to Aggarwal. Satyam can pick the best staff in Malaysia because few other companies have services operations there, he said. The company has enough of land in Cyberjaya to expand to a 5,000 seat facility, he added. Satyam, of Hyderabad, announced last month that it isÂ expanding its services operations in ChinaÂ to about 3,000 staff by 2008, from about 400 staff today. Besides addressing local and neighborhood markets like Japan and Hong Kong, the centers in China will service clients in North America. Other Indian outsourcing companies, like Infosys Technologies and Wipro, are alsoÂ setting up operations in other countries, particularly China and Eastern Europe, with an eye to the local and neighboring markets. Satyam is positioning China as an alternative offshore location to India, as its staff requirements go up, Raghavendra Tripathi, Satyamâs country head for China, said last month. Satyam had about 35,000 staff at the end of September, and most of these are based in India.ADVERTISEMENTNEW IT SERVICES FROM IBM: EASIER TO BUY AND IMPLEMENTDiscover a simpler, more cost-effective way to get the solutions your company needs to grow more flexible and efficient.
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Neil Nitin Mukesh is now on board with Percept Picture Company for three films.
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Barclays, the third-biggest British bank, said it had made an undisclosed offer for the wealth business of ING Securities Bank (France), a unit of Dutch banking giant ING Group.
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I.B.M. announced the sale of its personal computer business to Lenovo, a deal that reflects the ambitions of not only the two companies but also their two nations.
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Open-source database vendor Ingres Corp. is hoping that its newly released Icebreaker database and Linux combination will help it win new customers and enter fresh markets.
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MG Rover, the ailing British carmaker, has signed a binding agreement to hand over technology and know-how to the Shanghai Automotive Industry Corporation (SAIC).
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Computer Associates International Inc has announced that the open source version of its Ingres database management system is now available with enterprise-level support options for Linux and Microsoft&#39;s Windows.
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Mittal Steel has sweetened its proposal for a partnership with European group Arcelor and the two companies are now on the point of striking an agreement.
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Con l'India continua l'espansione internazionale del gruppo
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New Delhi, Dec 3 India and Russia today agreed to reach an Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) Agreement with regard to future supplies of defence equipment within four months.
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Air Deccan has signed a deal to acquire 36 planes from Avions de Transport Regional (ATR).