India must look beyond cheaper staff, expert 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.
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ERNST AND YOUNG&#39;S the Global Information Security Survey is just the latest to survey senior management&#39;s cluelessness when it comes to IT and are far too trusting when it comes to Indian outsourcing, it alleges.
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Estimates for the number of people in India with HIV/Aids could be greatly exaggerated, a leading Aids worker says.
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Reuters, the news service and data company, which is trying to meet stringent cost-cutting targets, said Thursday it would triple the number of employees it has in India by the end of next year.
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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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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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Offshore outsourcing&#39;s reigning champion, India, squares off against its upstart rival, China, on software quality, staff costs, advanced business skills and more. We also figure in a few top of mind questions for the IT manager who&#39;ll be traveling to his company&#39;s offshore provider once a quarter: Can I get a decent cup of coffee, and how long will I actually be on the plane?
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How does offshore outsourcing's reigning champion, India, compare against China on software quality, staff costs, and more?
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Despite India's economic boom in software and outsourcing services, economists have warned the government needs more reforms to create jobs in manufacturing to cut poverty.
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Indian automakers are plagued by a shortage of skilled workers, inferior product quality and deficient highway infrastructure, among other challenges.
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After decades on the sidelines, U.S. defense contractors are eyeing India's growing military budget and aging arsenal as a multibillion-dollar opportunity that could help offset a projected slowdown in Pentagon weapons spending and extend production lines for such items as the F-16 fighter.
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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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Indian outsourcers already have a large share of outsourced application development and maintenance and are dominant in business process outsourcing. The country is now targeting a larger share of the market for remote infrastructure management services (IMS), and is planning to more than double revenue from these services to $15 billion by 2013.
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[Business India]: Hyderabad, Nov. 15 : Microsoft Corp. will hire several hundred new staff at its new Indian campus in the next year, its chief executive said today-- a move aimed at strengthening its presence in Asia&#39;s fourth-biggest economy.
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'One is not advocating that you have to necessarily come back to the country to repay what it has done for you. But give your country a thought.' Ashutosh Gowariker discusses Swades.
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NEW DELHI/MUMBAI  - Executives from U.S. retail giant Wal-Mart toured Indian stores on Thursday as they work on a deal that could change the face of the country's $300 billion retail sector and has sparked fears of mass job losses.
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The human resources department is so 20th century. Recruitment has become the next outsourcing frontier. Think India.