Company Hopes to Take Outsourcing to a New Level: Africa
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Many large companies have reaped the economic benefits of outsourcing in recent years. Karim Morsli is trying to make money bringing those same advantages to small and medium-sized businesses -- while also spurring economic growth in Africa.
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Northern Africa is host to a new call center that's offshoring French-language technical support calls.
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Africa's economy will grow faster this year, but changes are still needed for it to catch up with the rest of the world.
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(InfoWorld) - Indian outsourcer Infosys TechnologiesÂ is expanding its facility in Brno in the Czech Republic, to boost its ability to deliver services to its European customers. The expanded facility will have a capacity of 350 seats by January, Infosys of Bangalore said on Wednesday. Infosys has about 130 staff in Brno, who deliver business process outsourcing (BPO) services such as sales order management, finance and accounts, market research and underwriting for clients in 16 European countries. Over 80 percent of the staff at Brno are hired locally, and operations are run in 13 different languages including German, French, and Spanish, Infosys said. The company is planning to also deliver IT services such as infrastructure management and package implementations such as enterprise resource planning (ERP) and customer relationship management (CRM) from Brno once the expanded facility is in operation. A number of Indian outsourcing companies including Wipro and HCL Technologies have set up operations in Europe or acquired companies there with an eye to the European market. Currently, the U.S. and U.K. account for most of the revenue of Indian outsourcing companies. Although companies in the U.K. outsource software development and business processes to India, the rest of Europe has been comparatively slower in outsourcing to India. Continental Europe accounts for only about 12 to 13 percent of India's outsourcing revenues, according to India's National Association of Software and Service Companies (Nasscom). Infosys' revenue from Europe has grown by 60 percent year-on-year for the last three years. Europe accounted for about 25 percent of the revenue of Infosys in the last quarter, but most of that came from the U.K., according to a spokeswoman for Infosys. Besides expanding in Brno, Infosys is also setting up a development facility in Swindon in the U.K. The company also has a development center in Germany, and a center in Mauritius that is designed to address European customers because the population in Mauritius is multilingual, the spokeswoman said. Having centers in Europe helps Infosys build up capabilities in the specific European languages required by customers, and also comply with European Union regulations on data protection and privacy, which require that certain types of data should not be sent for processing outside the E.U., the spokeswoman added.ADVERTISEMENTMAKE SOA REAL WITH IBM WEBSPHERE PODCASTStreamline processes and maximize efficiency within a proven service oriented architecture. Take back control of your business processes with IBM WebSphere.
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De Beers and the South African government unveil plans to create a new, black-run diamond mining firm.
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British Prime Minister Tony Blair's personal organisation to spearhead development activities in Africa issued a call on Thursday for massive international cooperation to assist the continent.
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By Bangkok Post, Thailand  Feb. 17--In the past year, "innovation outsourcing" has become a  buzzword.
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Its economy is growing fast, but Africa is struggling to shed its image problem
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The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) is planning to open an office in Africa to provide support for the establishment of the African Regional Internet Registry and Internet service providers (ISPs) across the continent, according to ICANN officials.
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A new kid on the block promises to give offshore outsourcing a run for its money--by routing technology work to rural America. [Outsourcing Blog]
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A takeover bid which would create the world's biggest gold company, with assets of $10bn, is reportedly being considered in South Africa.
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The company sees its future in helping businesses migrate their IT systems to more flexible, SOA-enabled infrastructures; more details about the strategy are expected next month.
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Vietnam is making a big push to turn itself into an outsourcing powerhouse.
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One of the pioneers of offshoring tries to cash in.
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Construction began this week on the 4,500-kilometer East African Marine System (TEAMS) undersea fiber optic project that will link east Africa to the Middle East and the rest of the world, according to government officials.Alcatel-Lucent will construct the cable, which should be operational in next year&#39;s second quarter, for $82 million. The vendor won a tender for the project last year.The cable will provide affordable international broadband connectivity to several countries in east Africa, said Kenyan Minister of Information and Communication Samuel Paghisio. The cable, Paghisio said, will initially have a capacity of 40GB but will later be upgraded to 640GB.&quot;The cable will bring competition on the pricing of bandwidth, which means that the cost of communication in the region will come down,&quot; Paghisio said.The project is a joint venture between the Kenyan government and the United Arab Emirates government through Etisalat Telecommunication. The two governments own 20 percent shares each in the project. Eighty percent of project shares have been opened to the private sector.The cable will run from Mombasa in Kenya to a global network of fiber-optic cables at Fujairah, United Arab Emirates. The East African region includes Rwanda, Uganda, Ethiopia, Sudan and Somalia.Kenya is a member of the&#160;east African submarine cable system&#160;(EASSY), another submarine cable project that will run parallel to TEAMS project under the Indian Ocean from Durban, South Africa, to Port Sudan in Sudan and provide high speed Internet connectivity. The EASSY project will connect 21 countries in the eastern and southern Africa region to the rest of the world.
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African leaders have vowed to speed up  the economic and political integration of their continent to  pursue the goal of a United States of Africa, but they also  agreed to study more closely how to achieve it.
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African leaders pitched on Monday for more trade and investment from Asia, saying they were pushing through economic and political reforms that will open up business opportunities in the continent.