Industry news

Avis, the worldwide car rental provider, has signed a contract with BT Spain to provide telecommunications services for Avis Alquile un Coche (rent a car) S.A., Avis Contact Centers S.A. and Avis Rent a Car Portugal. BT is now responsible for the companies’ WAN in Spain and Portugal, the WAN infrastructure for the Avis call centre in Barcelona, as well as for the management and proactive monitoring of the car rental company’s network.

The agreement, worth almost 4.5 million Euros, will last seven years. The deal also includes the provision of 3G backup services and 24x7 maintenance for the organisation’s most critical central offices.

Perot Systems Corporation, an Indian ITO provider, is to expand its facilities in India to cater for continued global growth. The company currently operates facilities in Bangalore, Chennai, Coimbatore and Noida and will open the new 23,617 square-foot facility in Chennai at the end of March. The new location will accommodate approximately 353 new seats for the company.

Vardhman Jain, MD at Perot Systems insurance and business process group, commented, "The services provided from the new facility will include processing highly complex and knowledge intensive, high-volume, high-value transactions for our healthcare provider, healthcare payer, life insurance and F&A clients around the world".

The University of Cambridge and Infosys have signed an agreement to undertake research in engineering, management and business, architecture and pharmaceuticals. Both partners will explore opportunities and implement research initiatives.

Professor Alison Richard, Vice-Chancellor, University of Cambridge added, "We, at Cambridge, are convinced that sustained collaborative research in business, science and technology has a pivotal role to play in the world today, and I am certain that this collaboration will create further exciting opportunities for us both in the years ahead.”

Speaking about the research partnership, Narayana Murthy, Chairman of the Board, Infosys Technologies said, “This collaboration will create an opportunity for some of the best minds engaged in academia and at Infosys to come together to identify and create relevant solutions in the areas of engineering, business, architecture and pharma."

Iceland has signed a seven year ITO deal worth over £11.5 million with Getronics.

The contract, a renewal of a previous deal, will run until 2015 and it includes 24x7 server hosting and systems management support. The fixed annual contract will be implemented throughout the UK.

Mark Pearson, IS Director at Iceland, commented, “We’ve built up excellent rapport and trust”. He also added, “The changes made to the contract have provided us with stability and security in terms of our IT platform in the current financial climate.”

Dave Baldwin, Managing Director at Getronics commented “We know Iceland’s business extremely well and have invested time with key contacts and stakeholders throughout the re-negotiation process. This has enabled us to completely align our technology and service provision with Iceland’s requirements and as the renewal was instigated by Iceland this speaks volumes for the working relationship we now have in place.”

The Ukrainian Hi-Tech Initiative has begun research for the “Central and Eastern Europe IT Outsourcing Review 2008”. The research will look at the state of the IT outsourcing market in Central and Eastern Europe.

The review will examine indicators of development in IT Outsourcing across central and Eastern Europe. The report will cover market volume, number of professionals, number of IT companies providing outsourcing services and individual labour costs to end users. This research will also look at the expert opinions about the impact of economic recession on global outsourcing development, particularly on the development of outsourcing in CEE region.

The Ukrainian Hi-Tech Initiative will work with various local bodies to collect and collate data on the region. Those involved include the Baltic Outsourcing Association, Hungarian Service and Outsourcing Association, Employers’ Association of the Software and Services Industry – ANIS (Romania), Bulgarian Web Association, and the Association of IT & Business Process Services Companies.

Valerica Dragomir, Executive Director at Employers’ Association of the Software and Services Industry (ANIS) commented, "The lack of analytical information about outsourcing services in CEE region prevents Central and Eastern European companies from demonstrating their potential in outsourcing services provision. That is why the decision of CEEOA to conduct the Central and Eastern Europe IT Outsourcing Review in an annual format will help the customers to receive a regular and reliable source of information on the development of IT outsourcing services market in the Central and Eastern Europe"

When complete, readers will be able to view the report at ITONews.eu, readers can also subscribe by emailing subscription(@)itonews.eu specifying “Central and Eastern Europe IT Outsourcing Review 2008” in the subject line.

This week has seen another example of sourcing and software as a service (SaaS) working in partnership, a sure indication of the emerging paradigm for sourcing this century.

Oracle Sourcing on Demand is the enterprise software giant's latest foray into on-demand services: a module for the purchase of supplies and services.

That said, this is no radical departure for Oracle, as the offering is based on existing components in its E-Business Suite Release 12, which means seamless access to other components of the suite.

As you might expect, the module is designed to enable collaborative processes, such as sourcing and striking the best deals, and because any business relationship is an ongoing thing, it allows you to build in rules and templates from previous successful – or unsuccessful – bids.

While it might not appreciate the comparison, Oracle is in a face-off against SAP, whose own SaaS provisions have been criticised by SaaS players. Salefsorce.com CEO Marc Benioff is on record as saying SAP's SaaS strategy is “horrible”.

In Oracle's case, it is also up-against specialist SaaS procurement and sourcing vendors, including Coupa, which was set up by ex-Oracle staff – something common to many of the leading SaaS vendors. Oracle chief Larry Ellison is himself an investor in Salesforce.com and NetSuite, two of the leading lights of the SaaS world.

Oracle is therefore firmly in the business of hosting and renting applications – and prices for Sourcing On Demand are reported as being in the region of $5,000 to set up and $850 a month to use – which the company believes carries a strong message in the recession, given that procurement can be a notoriously inefficient process.

That said, e-procurement was one of the major areas of promise at the turn of this century, and that market never blossomed despite the considerable promise.

• In other news this week, it will surprise few industry commentators that Satyam is seeking buyers for a majority stake in the troubled Indian services giant, which is still reeling from the scale of corruption and false accounting revealed earlier this year.

NASA has partnered with Cisco to develop an online collaborative global monitoring platform called the "Planetary Skin" to capture, collect, analyse and report data on environmental conditions around the world.

Under the terms of the ‘Space Act Agreement’, NASA and Cisco will work together to develop the Planetary Skin as an online collaborative platform to capture and analyse data from satellite, airborne, sea- and land-based sensors across the globe. This data will be made available for the general public, governments and businesses to measure, report and verify environmental data in near-real-time to help detect and adapt to global climate change.

"In the past 50 years, NASA's expertise has been applied to solving humanity's challenges, including playing a part in discovering global climate change," said S. Pete Worden, director of NASA's Ames Research Centre. "The NASA-Cisco partnership brings together two world-class organisations that are well equipped with the technologies and skills to develop and prototype the Planetary Skin infrastructure."

Readers can follow the project here: http://www.planetaryskin.org/

Satyam Computer Services has started the bidding process in an attempt to sell 51 percent of its shares, according to a Reuters report.

In a statement Satyam said bidders need to submit their interest by Thursday. The bidders will then be asked to submit a detailed expression of interest and provide availability of at least 15 billion rupees (US $290 million) by March 20.

Outsourcer breaks company record and increases earnings by a further 25 percent

Converso Contact Centres, headquartered in Southend-on-Sea, has achieved record revenues within the last three months. In November the company generated incomes of £400,000 and in January this figure rose to £500,000.

Ben Krempel, Converso’s Business Development Director, said the success has come from a jump in demand for outsourced services ranging from customer service management through to telemarketing, loyalty and up-selling campaigns. The success is also attributed to a consolidation and growth of services being provided to existing customers.

He commented, “In the past six months our pilot campaigns have been very popular allowing organisations to trial the effects of outsourcing first. Due to the success of these projects many of these have now turned into long-term business. We have also seen a trend from established customers to use more and more outsourced services particularly as internal resources are stretched.”

The Norwegian Public Service Pension Fund has signed a 5.5 million Euro application management outsourcing contract with Steria.

Under the terms of the agreement Steria will manage and further develop a number of Statens Pensjonskasse’s applications and interactive systems over the next four years.

"We are facing large development assignments in conjunction with the pension reforms. Equipped with the right application management system that is being handled by an experienced and robust player, our employees can concentrate on the project and on developing the pensions system of the future," said Cathrine Devold, Director of IT at Statens Pensjonskasse.