Hello - it's been a while since I last blogged, but I've been travelling a great deal and, in some cases, in regions where Internet access remains a big challenge. I recently got the opportunity to visit Rwanda, for example. While there, I visited a small but interesting new outsourcing business - but more about that in my next blog.

Last week, I was in London and had lunch with BG Srinivas, who heads up Infosys Technologies' European operations. It was a while since I'd visited London and even longer since I last saw Mr Srinivas. Our last meeting was way back in 2007, at a dinner he hosted in Greenwich. Attending this dinner were 25 UK university graduates from 12 different universities, who were off the next day to the company's Mysore campus for a six-month stint on the Infosys Global Talent Programme.

This time around, I was keen to get BG Srinivas's perspective on how Infosys would navigate the tricky path of global economic recovery. "The good news is that customers are starting to make decisions again," he told me. Across its global operations, Infosys has seen positive signs of recovery over the last three to five months, particularly in the US over the past two quarters.

But what about Europe? "We expected the European recovery to lag behind by around three to six months, and that has proved true, to some extent," he says. But he has been pleased, he says, to see a robust response to the European debt crisis within the region. "I'm glad it's being viewed as a collective problem, with all countries making sure that they are helping one another."

That said, Infosys has little if any direct exposure to the countries in the most serious trouble - Greece, for example, or Spain. Its major territories here are strictly northern European: the UK, Germany, France, Switzerland, Benelux and the Nordics. Nor need Infosys worry about the effects of the UK's Emergency Budget on its business - the company has "no real focus" on the public sector in this country.

But, says Srinivas, organisations in both the public and private sectors currently face the same challenge of "doing more with less", and for him, that's the guiding principle that is reshaping Infosys Technologies' approach to pricing.

"As clients and prospects start to experience the recovery for themselves, they're looking for ways to boost internal productivity while keep costs low - and not to get stuck with a whole lot of fixed cost, but to pay only for what they use," he explains. "To some extent, cloud computing is driving that change and customers are beginning to expect the same approach from a whole range of service providers. So in future you'll see Infosys moving more and more to pay-as-you-go and outcome-based pricing models."

As for the UK, Srinivas is seeing "definite positive signals, but we're still cautious. This certainly isn't a time for exuberance." Does he still host dinners for new graduate recruits and pack them off for a six-month Mysore training adventure, I wonder? UK students didn't get that opportunity in 2009, he confesses, but Infosys is considering reinstating the programme in 2010. And with our lunch over, he makes the dash from restaurant to office, across a blustery Canary Wharf.