Indian offshore call centers 'not doomed'
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Some companies are pulling customer care services back to U.K., but investment in offshore markets expected to continue.
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Indian outsourcing companies should expand their operations to other low-cost countries if they want to maintain their edge, experts said Thursday at an international software conference.
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Tsunamis that killed tens of thousands and ravaged coastlines around South Asia on Sunday are unlikely to impact the region's IT industry, which is centered away from affected areas.
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(InfoWorld) - Indiaâs outsourcing industry continues to do well despite theÂ appreciation of the Indian rupeeÂ against the U.S. dollar and higher staff costs. Indiaâs second largest outsourcer, Infosys Technologies, Wednesday revised slightly upwards its revenue forecast for its fiscal year to next March 31. The company said it expects revenue to grow by 29 to 31 percent during the year to between $4 billion and $4.05 billion. Infosys, of Bangalore,Â said in AprilÂ that it expected its revenue to grow by 28 to 30 percent to about $4 billion during the year. The company, which is listed both on Indian and U.S. stock exchanges, has however revised downward its revenue forecast in rupees, to take into account the appreciation of the rupee. Indiaâs software and services exports areÂ projected to growÂ by 26 to 29 percent to about $40 billion in the fiscal year to next March 31, India's National Association of Software and Service Companies (Nasscom) said this month. The countryâs revenue from exports of software and services and business process outsourcing (BPO) grew 33 percent to $31.3 billion in the fiscal year to last March 31, according to Nasscom in Delhi. The appreciation of the Indian rupee against the U.S. dollar pushes down rupee realizations for revenue earned abroad by Indian companies, even as staff costs in India are going up. The U.S. is the largest market for Indian outsourcers, accounting for about 66 percent of export revenue. Indian outsourcing companies seem to be holding out well against the pressures. Infosys of Bangalore has maintained its net margins despite the rupee appreciation, higher wages, and costs of visas to the U.S., the company said Wednesday, while announcing its results for the quarter ended June 30. iGate Global Solutions, a mid-size outsourcer in Bangalore, also said Wednesday that it had nearly doubled its operating margins in the quarter over the same quarter last year, despite a stronger rupee, on account of higher rates from customers, higher utilization, and increased use of offshore delivery of services. In the quarter ended June 30, Infosys posted revenue of $928 million up by 40.6 percent over the same quarter last year. The company's profits for the quarter were $263 million up by 51 percent from the same quarter last year. Infosysâ results are in compliance with US GAAP ( Generally Accepted Accounting Principles). The company added 35 new clients and 3,730 employees during the quarter taking the total number of employees as on June 30 to 75,971. Infosys plans to hire 26,000 more staff during the current fiscal year. Infosys and other Indian outsourcers compete with multinational services companies such as Accenture and IBM, which have set up offshore services delivery centers in India to take advantage of the lower cost of staff in the country. There is, however, enough business going around for both Indian and multinational companies, according to Indian outsourcers. The crunch comes in relation to hiring new staff. Wipro, Indiaâs third largest outsourcer will be announcing its results for the quarter next week.
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Indian outsourcing companies that have operations in Chennai, one of the locations on the southeast coast of India that was hit by tsunamis on Sunday, have decided to stay in the city.
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The debate continues over how much skilled work in the vast service sector of the American economy can migrate offshore to lower-cost nations like India.
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India&#39;s IT services market is forecast to grow to $10.73 billion by 2011, at a five-year compound annual growth rate of 23.2 percent, as outsourcing emerges as a more favored option for companies in India, according to research firm Gartner.As companies are finding it more difficult to hire and retain staff in their IT departments, they are looking at external service providers as an option, hoping to also cut down costs, and better manage growth in the process, Gartner said Tuesday.Indian user companies compete for staff with Indian outsourcing companies and Indian operations of multinational companies, which hire new staff by the thousands each quarter.Staff attrition is however not the key reason why companies are outsourcing, said Arun Gupta, chief technology officer, at Shopper&#39;s Stop, a top Indian retail chain. Driving outsourcing in India is a growing demand for new technologies and applications. Shopper&#39;s Stop has six IT projects in progress with another 12 projects planned for the next six to 12 months.Rather than creating and managing a large IT organization in house, the company is working with service partners to support its 45 IT staff, Gupta said. Some of the functions it outsources are network maintenance, desktop and server maintenance, monitoring enterprise resource planning (ERP) applications, and software development, he added.A number of large banks and telecommunications service providers are already outsourcing key IT operations, though the key winners so far have been multinational services companies. Many Indian outsourcing companies had neglected the Indian market in favor of exports, according to a survey last year by Gartner. But that may be changing as the&#160;weakening dollar puts pressure on rupee&#160;realization from exports.IBM,&#160;Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), and Wipro together accounted for 26.1 per cent of IT services vendor market share in India last year, according to Gartner. IBM was the top vendor, with 11.2 per cent market share. TCS and Wipro occupy the second and third positions with 10.9 and 4.1 percent market shares, respectively.However, the Indian IT services market is still fragmented, with the majority of the market being serviced by smaller local players that account for close to 40 per cent of the IT services market, according to Gartner.&quot;We have looked at smaller players for very small and specific jobs, but for larger jobs, running into a number of years, and which require a variety of skills, we look at large Indian companies or multinational services companies,&quot; Gupta said.The key segments of the Indian IT services market are hardware maintenance and support, software support, consulting, development and integration, IT management, and process management, Gartner said.
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India&#39;s business process outsourcing companies could attain revenues of up to $50 billion by 2012, but the industry will need greater investments in education and infrastructure by the government, according to a new report released Tuesday.At its current growth rate, India&#8217;s $11 billion BPO industry will reach about $30 billion by 2012, said the joint report, published by consultancy firm Everest Group and India&#8217;s National Association of Software and Services Companies (Nasscom).If the industry reaches $50 billion in revenue, it will directly employ two million staff and provide indirect employment for two to three times more people, said Som Mittal, president of Nasscom. The industry would comprise 2.5 percent of India&#39;s GDP (gross domestic product).Mittal said India&#39;s federal and local governments would have to play a larger role in order to push revenue to $50 billion. Over the last 10 years, the industry has done much on its own, such as building power generation facilities and providing training to staff, but could use more government support, Mittal said.Indian companies spend a lot on in-house training because the education system in India does not have direct links with the BPO industry, said Raman Roy, chairman and managing director of Quattro, a BPO firm.The BPO industry needs more employable graduates with skills in new areas such as analytics or the industry could face staff shortages of up to one million&#160;people for entry-level positions, Roy said.Some companies have explored setting up operations in smaller cities due to competition for staff from the retail and telecommunication areas.&#8220;We hire people from small cities, but we cannot set up operations there because the infrastructure does not exist,&#8221; Roy said. It is unfair to ask managers to move to small towns where there are no hospitals or entertainment, he added.The BPO industry now plans to set up regional hubs and develop infrastructure, including communications capabilities and staff housing. Many BPO companies now spend time and money transporting staff between cities and suburbs.The industry is also demanding that BPO companies be allowed to use the same facilities during daytime to address domestic business. India prohibits using the same facility for domestic and export business.Since nighttime operations focus on servicing foreign customers in the U.S. and Europe, using the same facilities during the day for domestic business would benefit companies, Mittal said.
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When outsourcing IT operations offshore, companies often focus on lower costs and more productivity -- and fail to keep in mind the cultural differences that could affect their security, said experts at the Gartner IT Security Summit.
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The Story: Silicon Valley businesses have long argued that changes in the immigration laws are needed to ensure a continuing supply of highly skilled workers. The current limit of 65,000 under the standard H1-B visas is not enough, they say. (The quota was filled in less than a month in 2007.)[ Slideshow: 2007's top underreported tech stories ]                                                    But that number obscures an important fact: The real total of visas issued to highly skilled workers is closer to 400,000 annually, according to the federal Citizenship and Immigration Services (CIS) agency. And that, say some critics, may mean that the law is being abused.There are two reasons the number is so large.First, the H1-B visa cap has a built-in exemption that allows an additional 20,000 workers who have graduated from U.S. universities with an advanced degree (master?s or higher) to enter every year.Second ? and the biggest reason ? is the use of L-1 visas, which are granted to executives and workers with specialized skills employed by multinational companies. Because there is no cap on L-1 visas issued each year, the numbers have soared. In the last three years, an average of 315,000 L-1 visas have been issued each year.Unlike the H-1B visas, the L-1 visas are not intended to be a springboard to possible permanent residency and a coveted green card. In essence, the L-1s are intended to allow multinational companies to rotate staff across national borders, so they can transfer foreign managers and specialists within the company to U.S. offices for a limited period of time.But the vast number of workers admitted with L-1 visas has critics suspecting that companies ? Indian outsourcing firms in particular ?are using them as a back door to bring in lower-paid workers to do jobs that could be performed by Americans, rather than for the intended purposes of staff rotation."It's clear that foreign outsourcing firms are abusing the system, and we can't let that continue," Sen. Richard Durbin (D-Ill.) said earlier this year as Congress debated immigration reform. Here?s what upset him: According to immigration records, 14 of 20 companies whose employees were granted the most L-1 visas were offshore outsourcing firms, including Tata Consultancy, Satyam Computer Services, Wipro, and Infosys Technologies.Tata Consultancy obtained 4,887 L-1s in fiscal 2006 ? the most of any company ? and 3,601 in fiscal 2007, second only to Cognizant (4,869), a U.S.-based outsourcer with a major presence in India. "I find it hard to believe that any one company has that many individuals ? legitimately being transferred within a single year," Durbin said in Congress. (Tata declined to comment to InfoWorld, but a spokesman told BusinessWeek, "We're complying with the law and with the regulations. We want to work with Congress to address any issues they may have.")Infosys, Wipro, Satyam, Tata, and Cognizant also appear on the CIS?s top 10 list of companies obtaining H-1B visas for employees in fiscal 2007, along with Microsoft, Cisco, IBM, Motorola, and Intel. Those facts further raise critics? suspicions.Bob Meltzer, who heads the VisaNow firm that helps applicants obtain visas, says there?s a growing belief that the L-1s are being abused today, though he can?t tell if that belief is justified. He does note that the L-1s had been abused in the early 1990s in the manner that critics suspect is happening today.The Bottom Line: Immigration is a tough issue. And it?s even tougher when we don?t have all the facts, as is the case on employers? claims of labor shortages requiring more foreign hires and employees? claims of being replaced by foreign workers by companies looking to save a buck. When you?ve figured out the right balance, let the pols know what you think.Complete list of 2007's underreported stories: 1.? Java is becoming the new Cobol 2.? Sun Microsystems is back in the game 3.? Hackers take aim at Mac OS X 4.? There are some threats you can worry less about 5.? Companies may have found a way around H-1B visa limits 6.? Open source?s new commercial strategy 7.? End-to-end Ethernet finally arrives 8.? Blade servers arrive for the masses 9.? BI is dead; long live BI 10. Balance of power shifts to software buyers
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(InfoWorld) - Chinese cities are expected to unseat Bangalore, Mumbai, and Delhi in India, and Manila of the Philippines, as favored offshore delivery centers by 2011, according to IDC. The market researcher has introduced a new Global Delivery Index (GDI), which compares 35 cities in the Asia-Pacific as potential offshore delivery centers, based on criteria such as cost of labor, cost of rent, language skills, government policies, infrastructure, and staff turnover rates. Bangalore currently tops the list, followed by Manila, Delhi, and Mumbai. The Chinese cities that figure in the 2007 list include Dalian, Shanghai, and Beijing, at numbers five, six, and seven. Indian cities have inherent challenges such asÂ cost of staff and pressure on infrastructure, said Conrad Chang, a research manager at IDCâs Asia Pacific operations, in a telephone interview on Thursday. While India has focused on the U.S. and European markets, China has large opportunities in the Japanese and Korean markets, Chang added. Chinese cities will overtake Indian cities by 2011 because of massive investments made in infrastructure, English language, Internet connections, and technical skills, which are favorable towards offshoring, IDC said Tuesday. Forrester Research,Â however, takes a less optimistic view about China as an offshore destination. Nearly two years ago, the country was widely viewed as a key challenger to India as an offshore services delivery location, however Forresterâs research shows that the market has not taken off as expected, the research firm said in a recent report. China primarily attracts business from Korean and Japanese companies, but most of them have preferred to set up their own operations in China rather than outsource, because there are not many large service providers in China, said Siddharth Pai, a partner at outsourcing consultancy firm Technology Partners InternationalÂ (TPI) in Houston, on Thursday. Many U.S. and European companies, that set up offshore services operations in India, may also have an operation in China, Pai said. â But the Indian operation will typically be the larger,â he added. China has still not overcome customersâ concerns about English language skills, intellectual property (IP) protection, and attrition in the country, Forrester said. In contrast, India has a sophisticated and time-tested legal environment built around Western common law, Pai said. Even if China invests heavily in education, the population cannot get in four to five years as fluent in English as Indians, he said. â Indians have been speaking English for over a hundred years,â he added. Indiaâs demographics also favor its continuation as a key offshore services location. On account of Chinaâs one-child-per-family policy, the countryâs population is aging. The country has about half as many people under 30 than India, Pai said. The IT industry primarily employs younger staff, he added. The IDC GDI rates the potential of cities as offshore destinations, said Chang. The actual business decision by companies to offshore to these cities will depend on a host of other factors, he added. The GDI is a moving index, reviewed every six months. âThis is not about India versus China,â Chang said. IDC expects both countriesâ offshore business to grow, he added.
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DALLIPUR, India -- The hip young Indians working inside this country's multinational call centers have one thing in common: Almost all hail from India's upper and middle castes, elites in this highly stratified society.
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Business & money: World's largest mobile operator finds conditions 'very difficult' in Europe but looks to growth in emerging markets like India.
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Indian outsourcing companies have to move beyond low-cost services on an hourly-rate basis to offering complete services, according to an outsourcing consultancy.
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BALTIMORE - Health care organizations not considering offshore outsourcing are missing out on significant cost savings, but administrators need to be aware of potential risks, including lax handling of data security by some vendors and the effect on employee morale, a health care IT analyst said Tuesday.
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Countries like India could become a source of profit, a panel of wireless industry figures says.
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Indian outsourcing companies must move beyond low-cost services on an hourly-rate basis, to offering complete services, according to an outsourcing consultancy.