Thursday, November 19, 2009

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Wipro bags Australian univ deal

Australia's University of Canberra, which awarded an outsourcing contract to Wipro in May earlier this year, plans to bring down its operational costs by up to 40 per cent over next three to four years, and focus better on its core business of teaching and research.

The University of Canberra, along with other Australian educational institutes are expected to spend around $650 million on different IT initiatives in order to modernise their processes, bring down operational costs and compete better in the global education market.

“There is a real competitiveness happening in education and I want every spare dollar to go into teaching and research”, said professor Stephen Parker, vice-chancellor and president of the university.

The university decided to outsource when it felt its IT support was expensive and not as effective as it should be. “It was a new world to me and we linked to the people in India who can do such things,” said Mr Parker.

Bruce Lines, registrar of the university added that offshoring of services was not an easy choice because of anti-offshoring sentiments in Australia.

However, the university decided to go ahead with outsourcing in order to save 30-40 per cent in operational costs, and manage different applications and data records of almost 10,000 students better.

“I almost fell off my chair when somebody mentioned the term offshoring, but gradually we realised that it is more about efficiency gains beyond pure cost savings,” he said.

Universities in Australia are also expected to use some $350 million infrastructure grant from the government towards modernisation of their processes and administrative systems.

“Education is Australia’s third biggest export market. There is a huge potential to tap this unexplored market, where universities need huge IT support not only to maintain administration, but also for high end research and development,” said Kannan Natarajan, general manager at Wipro for Australia, Asean and Middle East Markets.

Meanwhile, the university did face backlash when it announced its contract with Wipro. “We realised that it makes sense not only for cost benefits, but also because there are people who can do a job better than us,” said Mr Parker. “We are living in globalisation which is about exchange and it is not one way,” he added.

As educational institutes prepare to address a growing market, their investments in modernisation of different systems is likely to increase.

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