Industry news

Convergys Corporation (CVG), a global leader in relationship management, announced today that its channel partner, IP Integration, (IPI) a leading UK systems integrator located in Reading, has signed a contract for Convergys solutions with NHS Professionals (NHSP).

Already an IPI client, NHSP will now use Convergys Intelligent Interaction Solutions, including Intervoice [R] Voice Portal, Intervoice Advanced Notification Gateway, and speech recognition, as well as IPI’s Classify ME call classification application, within its Service Center.

NHSP is the largest provider of managed flexible services to the National Health Service in England with around 50,000 nurses, doctors, administration and clerical, and other healthcare professionals signed to its bank; placing approximately 2 million shifts a year and providing reliable flexible workers to around 80 NHS Trusts all across England. NHSP was looking for solutions to help it drive improved efficiencies within its Service Center operation.

With the solutions from IPI and Convergys, NHSP expects to save over one million minutes of customer service agent time annually through inbound and outbound call automation. The solutions enable NHSP to deliver proactive outbound communications regarding available shifts, which help drive flexible worker loyalty. Finally, the Convergys solutions help NHSP deliver high customer satisfaction through a user-friendly, intuitive interface and application that recognizes callers easily. NHSP expects to see a return on its investment in the solutions within one year.

“IPI and Convergys stood head and shoulders above the competition during the selection process for our IVR project,” said Phil Bartlett, NHSP Telephony Services Manager. “They invested time understanding our business, challenges, and objectives and always placed our customer’s needs front and centre of any recommendations. Their approach allowed us to address immediate business requirements, while setting the foundation for a strategic self-service roadmap.”

“Partnering with Convergys has provided IPI with a competitive differentiator within the higher end of the UK contact centre marketplace,” said John Bacon, IPI’s Account Executive. “After raising interest at one of our customer seminars, Convergys worked directly with IPI to help us identify a great speech opportunity with one of our key strategic accounts. By combining Convergys’ applications and speech expertise along with IPI’s specialist development team CTI Labs, we were jointly able to develop that opportunity from initial concept through to reality. Convergys’ pragmatic and flexible approach to indirect partnerships makes it our preferred choice for complex speech self-service applications.”

“IPI has been a value added reseller of Convergys solutions for two years, and is starting to make a significant impact in the market place. IPI is a great example of the value that a focused reseller like this can bring to Convergys in the UK,” said Mike Betzer, President, Relationship Technology Management, Convergys. “We look forward to creating a sustainable, long-term partnership with IPI, supporting it in its business pursuits, and reaffirming why Convergys is its vendor of choice for speech self-service applications.”

Hewlett-Packard Co. and Oracle Corp. said they resolved litigation over the appointment of Mark Hurd as a president of Oracle and reaffirmed the long-term partnership between the two companies.

“HP and Oracle have been important partners for more than 20 years and are committed to working together to provide exceptional products and service to our customers,” Cathie Lesjak, HP’s interim chief executive officer, said today in a statement.

Hurd was sued Sept. 7 by HP, which tried to block his move. The company said working as a president at Oracle would make it “impossible” for him to avoid using or disclosing HP’s trade secrets and confidential information. Hurd will adhere to his obligations to protect HP’s confidential information while fulfilling his responsibilities at Oracle, the companies said.

As part of the resolution of the legal dispute, Hurd and HP agreed to modify terms of his separation agreement from HP, including waiving his rights to 330,177 performance-based restricted stock units granted in January 2008, HP said in a regulatory filing. Hurd also waived his rights to 15,853 restricted stock units granted in December 2009, HP said.

The settlement is unlikely to affect HP’s stock price or limit Oracle’s ability to compete with HP, said Aaron Rakers, an analyst at Stifel Nicolaus & Co. in St. Louis.

‘Neutral’ Affect

“At face value when I look at it, it’s more of a neutral on the stock,” said Rakers, who recommends buying HP shares and doesn’t own any himself. “Everyone is waiting for the naming of the next CEO.”

Legal experts have said that HP would be unlikely to prohibit Hurd’s move because California’s courts favor letting employees move freely. The theory that trade secrets will inevitably be disclosed “won’t work in California as a reason to prevent someone from taking a job,” Mark Lemley, a professor at Stanford Law School who specializes in intellectual property, said in an interview earlier this month.

HP gained 36 cents to $39.75 in extended trading after rising 25 cents to $39.39 at 4 p.m. on the New York Stock Exchange. The stock has dropped 15 percent since Hurd resigned on Aug. 6.

India's top mobile phone firm, Bharti Airtel, said Friday it had chosen United States computer giant IBM to supply information technology services to upgrade its 16 new African networks.

Bharti Airtel, the world's fifth-largest mobile phone company, completed the purchase of Kuwait's Zain's African cellular operations for 10.7 billion dollars in June. The deal included the assumption of a $1.7 billion debt.

The move marks the first significant step by Bharti Airtel to replicate its business model in sub-Saharan Africa, where it aims to nearly triple the current number subscribers to 100 million by 2012-2013.

"There are huge opportunities throughout Africa to transform how people communicate," Bharti Airtel chairman Sunil Bharti Mittal said when announcing the African partnership.

The decade-long joint venture with IBM will allow Bharti Airtel to "deliver innovative and affordable 2G and 3G mobile services across the (African) continent," the New Dehli-based company said in a statement.

Under the agreement, IBM will manage the computing technology, customer and other services underpinning Bharti Airtel's mobile communications network, spanning 16 countries including Nigeria, Uganda and Kenya.

Bharti gave no financial details but analysts have pegged the deal's value at between one and 1.5 billion dollars.

The African venture continues a partnership that began in 2004 when Bharti tapped IBM to run the information technology systems for its Indian network.

Since then, Bharti has seen its growth explode to over 150 million subscribers, becoming India's leading mobile provider.

Bharti said details of the venture are expected to be finalized by the year’s end, adding that IBM also views Africa as the next big emerging growth market as it diversifies revenues.

The African partnership is "a logical extension" for Bharti as it tackles the competition in Africa, said Romal Shetty, executive director of Indian telecoms at global consultancy KPMG.

"It's key to Bharti's success in Africa, there's a huge amount of knowledge IBM has about Bharti and it's logical for Bharti to take them to Africa," he said.

Bharti is facing a tough challenge from MTN, Africa's largest cellular operator, which "has very strong branding across Africa," added Shetty.

The Indian company said it hoped to duplicate in Africa the Indian success of its relationship with IBM, "by lowering the barrier to entry for the people of Africa to own a mobile device."

According to global consultancy Deloitte, only 40 percent of Africans have a mobile phone but demand is growing by 25 percent annually.

Bharti, which pioneered low-cost telecoms in India, hopes to cut Zain's high cost base and win subscribers – and get subscribers to talk by offering lower tariffs.

Bharti is famous for its so-called "minutes factory" business plan – the low-cost, high-volume model that has made it such a success.

"We have achieved great success together in India, and now we are bringing that model to Africa," IBM chief executive officer Samuel Palmisano said.

"By building a 21st-century telecommunications infrastructure for the continent... we expect to help spark transformation," he said.

Amazon Web Services (AWS) now fully certifies and supports a number of applications on Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) when they are run using Oracle VM virtualisation, the companies announced at Oracle OpenWorld on Sunday. The software covered is Oracle E-Business Suite, PeopleSoft Enterprise, Siebel CRM, Fusion Middleware, Database and (Oracle) Linux.

"Customers may use their existing Oracle licences on Amazon EC2 at no additional licence cost, or they may acquire new licences from Oracle," the companies said in a statement.

Computing resources can be provisioned from EC2 on an as-needed basis. This means that when running Oracle applications in the environment, customers will be able to "add or shed resources as needed, paying only for resources used", said Charlie Bell, head of utility computing services at AWS, in a statement.

Oracle and AWS said they plan to publish Amazon Machine Images (AMIs) based on underlying Oracle VM templates of some of Oracle's software. An AMI is a template used to store a map of application information to allow it to run within EC2. The new AMIs should help businesses cut implementation times for applications on EC2 "from weeks or days to minutes", Oracle said in a statement.

Those who use the AMIs will be able to take advantage of EC2 Load Balancing, Auto-Scaling and Reserved Instance pricing, along with other AWS-specific cloud technologies.

Initial AMIs will comprise of Oracle Linux, Oracle Database, Oracle E-Business Suite and aspects of the Fusion Middleware technologies, including WebLogic Server and Business Process Management. Future AMIs will include PeopleSoft Enterprise, Siebel CRM and Oracle's JD Edwards applications. Dates and prices were not available at the time of writing.

Even as the political rhetoric over offshoring picks up in the US, UK’s top back office provider Capita has decided to use India as an offshoring base for its new IT business. Capita recently diversified from its traditional back-office business into IT, and a top official from the UK firm said it would hire people in India for IT application development and maintenance work.

The Capita group is one of the largest BPO providers to the UK life and pensions industry, and its IT facilities in India will be used to provide testing services and to support technology platforms for life and pensions clients. “We have been expanding our IT capability quite significantly and have made three-to-four acquisitions in IT,” said Simon Pilling, COO, Capita. IT skills are key to Capita’s growth and Samad Masood, an analyst with technology researcher Ovum, said in a recent report that many of the firm’s wins involve using IT as a key part of service delivery.

“Capita needs to build IT capability and expertise fast. IT skills are increasingly important in winning BPO deals, not least because many BPO deals require service providers to integrate, modernise or web-enable clients’ existing software platforms... On top of this, leading IT services companies such as IBM, Accenture, Capgemini, Atos Origin and Capgemini (to name but a few) are increasingly using their IT expertise to encroach on Capita’s BPO turf,” said Mr Masood.

Capita intends to employ around 300-400 people, representing around 10% of its workforce in IT across Pune and Mumbai by the year-end. It has hired, Manpreet Singh, a former senior vice-president with the Vertex group, to head the IT operations.

The UK government, which is the key customer for Capita is also expected to outsource more business.

“There was a slowdown in the build up to the general elections but we expect opportunities to open up now. There are good messages coming out of the coalition government, and I expect significant changes over the next two-to-three years,” said Mr Pilling.

UK prime minister David Cameron’s coalition government has said it will cut down spends on big projects, including some awarded to Indian outsourcers such as Tata Consultancy Services. But the pitch outsourcing companies like Capita are making to the UK government is that by outsourcing administrative tasks, the government can significantly reduce expenditure and focus on the task of governance.

In a significant announcement, the Big Blue has bagged a major 10 year contract for managing Jet Airways’ IT. IBM has significant presence in India, with around 14 offices in different cities across the country. According to IBM, the Rs. 285 crore ($62 Million) deal is a first of its kind in Indian aviation. As part of the agreement, IBM will be managing the IT infrastructure which includes services like:

Airport operations

Frequent flier programs

Application support services

Employee transition

Data centre operations

Central help desk support

Server and storage operations

Internet security services

Network management

SAP and other operating system

Jet Airways is one of India’s biggest operator with a fleet of 90 air crafts that fly to and from 65 destinations around the world. With this deal Jet Airways expects to have better integration of their IT systems to increase efficiency. Nikos Kardassis (CEO ,Jet Airways India) said, “This association will enable us to focus on our core business and improve our operational efficiencies, besides delivering a seamless customer experience.”

IBM has been working in the aviation segment for a long time, with their more recent project being working with the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration to build a better security system for their computer networks. IBM is proud to have won the contract, IBM India/South Asia Distribution VP Sameer Batra says, “The agreement with Jet Airways is a significant milestone for IBM in the aviation industry. Jet Airways will have access to industry expertise and knowledge, which are essential for sustaining growth and leadership in the competitive global market.”

Cognizant (CTSH), a leading provider of consulting, technology, and business process outsourcing services, announced a joint development program with Microsoft to deliver cloud enabled solutions to enterprise customers. As part of this program, Cognizant has set up a state-of-the-art “Octane Solution Center” to accelerate development of cloud-enabled next-generation solutions that integrate Cognizant business services and Microsoft technologies.

The Octane Solution Center extends Cognizant’s long-term partnership with Microsoft and will facilitate collaboration between customers and senior business technology specialists, solution architects, security experts, and change management professionals. Enterprise decision makers will be able to discover, envision, prototype, and evaluate innovative cloud-enabled solutions to their business problems. Cognizant’s industry-aligned Octane solutions will ultimately deliver disruptive levels of value by combining a full range of Cognizant services—including consulting, solution accelerators, and technology management—and Microsoft cloud-enabling technologies such as Azure.

Bob Perry, Director of Product Engineering at LexisNexis, USA, a leading global provider of content-enabled workflow solutions for the legal industry, said, “Cognizant has been an integral innovation partner for LexisNexis in our adoption of new Microsoft-based technologies aimed at the delivery of next-generation products for the legal research market. Cognizant has provided the expertise and best practices necessary to leverage the promise of changing technology in meeting the demands of our customers. Their expertise and dedication to our relationship has positioned us for growth, scalability, and customer satisfaction.”

Inaugurating the Center in Bangalore, S. Somasegar, Senior Vice President of the Developer Division at Microsoft, said, “Enterprises seeking to adopt cloud technologies are looking for trusted advisors to help them address their concerns and show them how organizations can realize the potential of applying cloud technologies. Cognizant, with its proven expertise on Microsoft technologies, deep domain knowledge, and innovative solutions, is well placed to provide advice and lead customers toward profiting from Microsoft cloud services.”

Cognizant is a key Microsoft global service integrator and has dedicated Microsoft centers of excellence built to design and implement business technology solutions that employ a broad portfolio of Microsoft technologies. The jointly funded Octane Solution Center expands the long-standing alliance to focus on creating next-generation solutions that enable new thresholds of business performance by leveraging cloud delivery models and technologies.

“Cognizant’s early capabilities on Windows Azure are helping us explore potential solutions for our customers using this technology,” said Rajaramana Macha, Senior Vice President of R&D at Invensys Operations Management, a leading provider of industrial automation and information technologies, systems, software solutions, services, and consulting to global manufacturing and infrastructure industries.

“Cognizant is committed to helping customers create optimized levels of business performance for the new virtualized organization, and delivering services that enable them to increase business effectiveness, efficiency, innovation, and virtualization. This strategic program will enable our customers to realize the full potential of Microsoft Cloud technologies and redefine the way they deliver value to their customers,” said R Chandrasekaran, President and Managing Director of Global Delivery at Cognizant.

Cloud-computing services consumed from external service providers (ESPs) are estimated to be 10.2 percent of the spending on external IT services, according to a worldwide survey by Gartner, Inc.

From April through July 2010, Gartner surveyed 1,587 respondents in 40 countries to understand general IT spending trends and spending on key initiatives such as cloud computing. Participants were IT budget management professionals (CIOs, IT VPs, IT directors, IT managers, etc.). Four hundred eighty-four respondents participated in the drill-down on cloud computing and were asked how their organization's current budget for cloud computing was distributed, as well as what their estimate was for spending next year.

"The cloud market is evolving rapidly, with 39 percent of survey respondents worldwide indicating they allocated IT budget to cloud computing as a key initiative for their organization," said Bob Igou, research director at Gartner. "One-third of the spending on cloud computing is a continuation from the previous budget year, a further third is incremental spending that is new to the budget, and 14 percent is spending that was diverted from a different budget category in the previous year."

Forty-six percent of respondents with budget allocated to cloud computing indicated they planned to increase the use of cloud services from external providers. Gartner analysts said there is a shift toward the "utility" approach for noncore services, and increased investment in core functionality, often closely aligned with competitive differentiation.

More respondents expected an increase in spending for private cloud implementations that are for internal or restricted use of the enterprise (43 percent) than those that are for external and/or public use (32 percent).

"Overall, these are healthy investment trends for cloud computing. This is yet another trend that indicates a shift in spending from traditional IT assets such as the data center assets and a move toward assets that are accessed in the cloud," said Mr. Igou. "The trends are good news for IT services providers that have professional services geared to implementing cloud environments and those that deliver cloud services. It is bad news for technology providers and IT services firms that are not investing and gearing up to deliver these new services seeing an increased demand by buyers."

On a regional basis, Asia/Pacific, Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA), and North America spent between 40 and 50 percent of the cloud budget on cloud services from ESPs. Latin America was the exception, with a notably larger portion of budgets being spent on developing and implementing private and public cloud environments, reflecting the need to cater to the close business relationships and high-touch interactions that are characteristics of the Latin culture.

"Cloud-based IT services are evolving fast and differently in the countries and regions surveyed. Service marketing managers for IT services providers must be monitoring the contract value and intentions of customers for their service lines and cloud service offerings at the country and regional levels of their operations," said Mr. Igou. "Demand is shifting from traditional proprietary and highly customized assets to ubiquitous assets that are accessed by customers. Service marketing and service delivery managers need to lead the curve of investment in the skills and capabilities of their service offerings, which means investing before having contracts."

Capgemini, one of the world's foremost providers of consulting, technology and outsourcing services, today announced that its subsidiary Capgemini Outsourcing Services SAS ("Capgemini"), has been awarded a long-term contract from Nokia Siemens Networks, a leading global enabler of communications services, to support the company's global order management operations. This engagement leverages Capgemini's in-depth knowledge of the telecommunications market and its industry-leading experience in supply chain business process outsourcing.

Capgemini will provide order management services to Nokia Siemens Networks, including preparation for delivery, customer order management, distribution and customer invoicing, while customer facing activities will remain with Nokia Siemens Networks. Capgemini will leverage its BPOpen™ technology platform and its Rightshore® network to harmonize and standardize the processes across Nokia Siemens Networks’ worldwide operations.

Under the terms of the agreement, close to 400 employees from Nokia Siemens Networks will be joining Capgemini BPO Supply Chain Services teams from several countries including Brazil, China, Finland, Germany and India. Additionally, more than 300 contractors to Nokia Siemens Networks will continue their work under Capgemini’s management.

“As clients face an increasingly global business environment, growing supply chain costs, and a larger ecosystem of partners and customers, a streamlined and sustainable supply chain will be key to growth”, said Hubert Giraud, Head of Capgemini BPO. “Capgemini’s collaborative and strategic approach to supply chain transformation, market knowledge and suite of enabling tools and technology will allow leading global companies like Nokia Siemens Networks to optimize their supply chain operations and achieve true competitive advantage.”

“Capgemini’s excellent reputation and proven track record of maximizing efficiency in business processes, along with its global delivery model, were major factors in our decision to select them as our partner and future employer of our logistics experts. We believe that this relationship will considerably improve our order management and delivery performance through shorter lead times, better quality and increased efficiency, while Nokia Siemens Networks will focus more intensely on the customer facing aspects of order management“, said Johannes Giloth, global head of Supply Chain, Nokia Siemens Networks.

CSC (CSC) today announced that a major multiline insurance provider has signed a license and maintenance contract for CSC’s New Business Accelerator (nbAccelerator) and Insurance Optics Business Analytics. The growing company will integrate the two new applications with its existing CSC policy administration system, CyberLife.

The insurer will use nbAccelerator for application submission, requirements management, work tracking management and policy issue processing for traditional life insurance, universal life insurance and disability income insurance. The company will also implement Business Analytics to access and analyze new business and customer data from multiple systems to proactively and quickly address changing conditions.

“nbAccelerator helps insurers speed new business and create efficiencies by eliminating processing steps, reducing handoffs and automating more tasks, while Business Analytics helps carriers transform new business data into useful, actionable information,” said Michael W. Risley, president of the Life Insurance and Annuity division of CSC’s Financial Services Group. “With world-class solutions such as these, CSC can help insurers reach their growth objectives and reduce the risks associated with change.”

nbAccelerator supports multiple products, distribution channels and administration systems, and provides the technology and business processes needed to seamlessly manage new business. Comprised of underwriting, automation, document management and production-proven work management, nbAccelerator decreases the cost of issuing life and annuity contracts while increasing productivity.

Business Analytics software and services, a part of CSC’s Insurance Optics family of business intelligence solutions, allow insurers to quickly monitor business results and their drivers. The software displays critical data in report or dashboard views with interactive filters, sliders and gauges that make it easy to drill down and reveal specific causes of particular outcomes.