Jobs fair and unemployment info sessions planned for laid-off IBM workers

The state is offering more unemployment information sessions and now a job fair for laid-off workers from IBM and other Vermont businesses. All events will be held at the Sheraton Hotel and Conference Center in South Burlington.

The Rapid Response unemployment information sessions are scheduled back-to-back for Thursday: two morning sessions from 9 to 10:30 a.m. and 10:30 a.m. to noon. Workshops will include resume writing, interviewing skills and information on financial restructuring after a layoff, according to a news release from the Vermont Department of Labor.

An Employer and Training Provider Job Fair is scheduled for 9:30 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. Monday. A list of employers planning to attend was not available as of publication time; booths will include employers, training service providers, financial advisers and health care program representatives.

Read more at: http://vtdigger.org/2013/07/10/jobs-fair-and-unemployment-info-sessions-planned-for-laid-off-ibm-workers/#sthash.scoGMQLX.dpuf

IBM’s new Morocco centre to create 400 jobs

IBM has announced a new Global Delivery Center in Casablanca that will create up to 400 IT roles in Morocco over the next three years.

The center will enable IBM to deliver a range of innovative technology services to clients in Morocco and across French-speaking Africa. It will also offer IBM clients in the region high value application development, application maintenance and systems integration services.

It will address the increasing demand for flexible software capability to harness the benefits of emerging technologies such as big data, cloud and mobile. IBM is working closely with the Moroccan government and local universities, and the Center is expected to help stimulate economic activity in the country.

IBM, Jet Airways sign 10-year call centre deal

IT giant IBM will manage the customer call centre, including providing improved analytics capabilities and a 'refreshed' IT infrastructure, for Jet Airways, India's second-largest airline by passengers carried, the two companies announced.

Under the 10-year contract, IBM will provide contact centre and back-office services for the airline's 11 lines of business such as domestic and international reservations, Jet Privilege program, cargo, refunds and helpdesk services. The arrangement is an extension of their three-year relationship under which Jet says the IBM helped transform its core IT Infrastructure.

IBM’s Layoffs Exceed 1,600 People

According to employee group Alliance@IBM, an affiliate of the Communications Workers of America union, layoffs at IBM have more than exceeded the initial estimates of 1,600 positions. These include at least 222 people from areas like marketing and 165 in semiconductor research and development.

IBM – one of the world’s largest computer services providers – has initiated a global restructuring plan, laying-off nearly 2,800 employees in North America alone. And more cuts are expected in nations like India as the company intents on spending $1 billion globally to trim its workforce.

According to the official national IBM employee’s union, the total number of lay-offs in the US as of June 15, 2013 was 2,792. But some grimly project the number of workers cut could hit upwards of 8,000 – roughly two percent of the company’s workforce. Others speculate the number to be closer to 5,000.
Read more at http://www.inquisitr.com/761676/ibms-layoffs-exceed-1600-people/#psDrpTAoKK5YTIRI.99

IBM lays off undisclosed number of workers

IBM has laid off an undisclosed number of workers this week as the company intensifies its focus on some of some of the technology industry's hottest markets.

The cutbacks are part of a reorganization that IBM Corp. executives disclosed in April during a conference call discussing the Armonk, New York, company's first-quarter earnings. IBM said it would spend $1 billion reshuffling the types of jobs it needs in its workforce this year, with most of the changes coming before the end of June. The company indicated most of the layoffs would occur outside the US. Read More at Huff post.

IBM wins 10-year IT deal with Gujarat bank

IT major IBM India has signed a 10-year information technology (IT) services agreement with Sardar Bhiladwala Pardi People's Cooperative Bank in Gujarat, the company said Monday.

'The operational expenditure in the pay-as-you-use model will enable the leading cooperative bank to save up to 50 percent in its capex (capital expenditure) on IT infrastructure,' IBM said in a statement.

As part of the deal, IBM India will provide the 80-year-old bank managed continuity services comprising server management, network and security management and back-up and database management.

TCS, Infy, Wipro, IBM to bid for Rs 2000 cr online FIR project

Vijay Kumar Singh hopes that by 2012, most of those he gets to see in person would be potential criminals.

Well, Singh happens to be a cop. And those whom he intends to spare from his appointment diary are the general public. Singh’s hopes are pinned on a new automated complaint filing and tracking system that the ministry of home affairs (MHA) plans to roll out across India, aimed at trimming the time the general public spends in doing the labyrinthine rounds of the good old police station.

At the Greater Kailash-1 police station in South Delhi, where Singh is the station house officer, the existing Zipnet search is pretty much an ornament. The system tracks from a set base of data, often outdated, and fails to read the latest inputs from other law enforcement agencies.

The new integrated system police officers like Singh are looking forward to will network initially 14,000 police stations across the country, and all the 6,000 higher offices in police hierarchy (like headquarters, range offices, zonal offices). It will bring the benefits of India Inc’s technology prowess to this British era institution, hopes Singh.

IBM eyes tier II, III cities for expansion in India

IT solutions provider IBM is planning to expand its footprints in tier II and tier III cities with a bouquet of hardware, software and services offerings primarily targeted at mid-market clients.

IBM Growth markets vice president Harish Krishnamurthy told ET that the company is soon going to set up its hubs in potential cities like Raipur, Bhopal, Bhubhaneshwar, Vizag and Nagpur. “These cities have great untapped potential.

By starting our hub in these cities we would be able to cater to the requirements of surrounding tier III cities through our partners under hub and spoke model. The small and medium enterprises offer great business opportunities,” he said.

At present, IBM has a direct presence in 22 cities across the country. The company has also appointed IT players Sequel Infocom and Icon Integrated services as the channel partners to sell IBM’s infrastructure services to clients. “These two partners will focus primarily on Rajasthan market. They will help us in enhancing our reach in the state by offering infrastructure services to clients helping them in areas of Green IT, security, business continuity, improved collaboration and communication among others,” he said.

IBM has also launched first of its kind service offering named IBM Express Remote managed Infrastructure Services (ERMIS) exclusively to be sold by its channel partners. “IBM cannot sell it directly to the clients. It has to be sold through our channel partners. It is designed to enable IBM business partners in providing their clients with remote monitoring, management and service reporting of their IT infrastructure,” said Vivek Malhotra, IBM vice president – North & East, General Business.

Apart from that the company has also launched a cost-efficient Scalable Modular Server Rooms (SMSR), which has been successfully implemented in Shree Cements. “This is also first of its kind in the country. Unlike other conventional servers, which take 6-7 months for installation, this data server takes shipment time of 2-3 weeks and just 3 days of implementation time. Also, it consumes 15-30% less power than other servers. The entry level model comes at a competitive price point of $50,000 which is almost 10% of any conventional server,” Mr. Malhotra said.
Source: EconomicTimes

US state cuts IBM contract

The US state of Texas has reportedly pulled its voter registration system out of an ongoing $863 million data center consolidation project being handled by IBM.

Texas Secretary of State's office is said to have cut the project because of data security and disaster recoverability fears.

According to the news report in ComputerWorld, the decision was prompted by an incident in August when a server being managed by IBM crashed resulting in a 13-day outage of the office's business records filing system.

The news article quotes a spokesman from the Secretary of State's office saying that the incident exposed "weaknesses" in IBM's ability to recover lost data.

As a result of the concerns expressed by the Secretary of State's office, Texas Governor Rick Perry and the state's Department of Information Resources, which is overseeing the IBM contract, gave permission for the agency to withdraw its election systems from the contract, the report said. Following its withdrawal from the IBM project, the agency will set up its own data center with two separate back-up locations.

According to the report, an IBM was performing for the Secretary of State's office shows that the project started in November 2004 and was supposed to have been completed by January 2006.

Under the contract, IBM was supposed to have helped Texas build a statewide voter registration system that would be complaint with Help America Vote Act standards.

The new system known as the Texas Election Administration Management, or TEAM, system will replace the existing Texas Voter Registration System.

IBM, HP shortlisted for $700 million Microsoft deal

Multinational outsourcing firms IBM and HP have been shortlisted for around $700-million contract for managing Microsoft’s global network of desktops, servers and other IT infrastructure, as the world’s biggest software maker seeks to lower its operational costs and focus better on its core business.

India’s top outsourcing vendors had also bid for this contract, but they lost out to the multinational rivals who have better global footprints and are even ready to take over assets, including Microsoft’s staff.

“This was one contract where most of us were bidding hard, especially given the kind of customer we are talking about, but global service providers seem to have taken a lead,” said a senior executive at one of the tech firms involved during the early-stage of bidding.

Another person based in the US and familiar with this contract said, Microsoft had issued a global request for proposal (RFP) few months ago for this contract. Officials at Microsoft India did not respond to an e-mail query sent by ET.

The global IT infrastructure market has been growing exponentially over the past few years. The top-15 vendors, analysed by Forrester in a recent report, provided remote and onsite services for about 16.7 million desktops, 1.7 million servers and 23.4 million users globally. These vendors, including IBM, HP-EDS, CSC and some Indian tech firms, delivered $83.9 billion worth of infrastructure services past year.

“Some clients clearly will require the scope only an IBM or HP can deliver, but many don’t,” said Paul Roehrig, principal analyst at Forrester Research. “All of the India-centric firms, included in the study — Cognizant, HCL Technologies, Infosys, TCS, and Wipro — have excellent forward-looking strategies for the infrastructure business,” he added.

On their part, Indian tech firms, such as TCS, Infosys and Wipro, have made substantial progress in gaining market share when it comes to application development, maintenance and back-office outsourcing, however, outsourcing of computer hardware maintenance is an area where multinational rivals still lead.

“In areas where infrastructure can be managed remotely, Indian vendors are as good as anybody else, however, there are certain pieces of infrastructure management, such as end user computing, where they do not have enough global resources,” said Siddharth Pai, managing director of outsourcing advisory firm TPI India. Indeed, when HCL recently won over $350 million infrastructure from Reader’s Digest Association in March this year, it involved remote management of the publisher’s desktops and servers.

Apart from having substantial onshore resources, some infrastructure outsourcing contracts also involve financing, which is readily offered by vendors such as IBM and HP. India’s pure software vendors do not have hardware products to be bundled with such contracts. Moreover, because of asset transfer, most infrastructure deals offer lower operating margins when compared with application development and maintenance contracts.

“In a $500-million contract, involving only people, the margins can be $100 million, but when it includes asset transfer, the margins can hit $55 million,” argued Mr Pai. While lower margins may be making it less attractive for Indian companies to pursue large infrastructure outsourcing contract, they are ready to execute projects, involving remote delivery, which helps them retain their margins.

“Although dwarfed in size by the legacy global service provider firms, India-centric firms, including Cognizant, HCL Technologies, Infosys, and TCS, also landed among the leaders by showing good delivery capability and generally strong forward-looking strategies for the global infrastructure services business,” added Mr Roehrig of Forrester.

IBM to Give Employees 100% Coverage of Primary Care

International Business Machines Corp., the world’s largest computer-services company, will provide U.S. employees with 100 percent coverage for primary care, a policy designed to curb health expenses.

Beginning next year, employees will no longer have to pay deductibles for visits to in-network doctors such as internists, general practitioners and pediatricians, Armonk, New York-based IBM said today in a statement. The company said it is one of the first U.S. employers to adopt such a policy.

The decision is aimed at encouraging employees to visit the doctor more often, so illnesses are treated before they become serious. IBM said the policy will cover about 80 percent of its 115,000 U.S. employees. The other 20 percent belong to health maintenance organizations.

“We believe in giving people incentives to get health care early and often,” said Marianne DeFazio, director of health- care benefits and strategy at IBM. “When people have no barriers to getting primary care, you catch things early and you prevent things.”

IBM said it has invested $79 million in nutrition and exercise programs between 2004 and 2007, saving more than twice that amount in health-care costs.

DeFazio declined to say how much the move would cost IBM in the near term. More prevention will eventually cut health cost inflation, she said.

“We believe more efficient and individualized care will result in better outcomes and lower costs for everyone,” she said.

Primary Care

IBM will have to blend financial incentives for primary care with information to push costs down, said Lisa Suennen, a health-care venture capitalist at Psilos Group in Corte Madera, California. Insurance plans at some companies give diabetics incentives to get primary care, and add education programs to help patients understand how to care for chronic illness, she said.

What IBM is doing “is not common at all, and it’s a good start,” Suennen said. “But it needs to be coupled with information to coach the patients.”

Previously, IBM required health-plan participants to pay 20 percent of the cost of primary care, DeFazio said. The company already covered preventive measures such as mammograms for women over 40 and colonoscopies for employees over 50, DeFazio said.

IBM rose $1.37 to $122.87 at 4:15 p.m. in New York Stock Exchange composite trading. The shares have advanced 46 percent this year.

Scandal hits corporate role models IBM, McKinsey

It isn't often that big blue gets a black eye. But on Friday IBM, the leading U.S. technology firm known for its conservative management, found itself entangled in the largest ever hedge fund insider-trading scheme involving Galleon Group founder Raj Rajaratnam.

Robert Moffat, senior vice president and head of IBM's systems and technology group was named as a defendant. Executives at leading chipmaker Intel Corp and management consulting firm McKinsey & Co. were also implicated.

Bob Djurdjevic, an Annex Research analyst who has been covering IBM for over 30 years and is himself a former employee, said the news came as a shock.

"If there's any company that's always been a model of pristine behavior, being above it all, it was IBM," he said.

"I don't think it will have an effect on IBM's business because it has deep talent. However, it is a black eye to IBM's reputation."

The charges, stemming from wiretaps, included accusations that Moffat passed on to hedge fund New Castle Group insider information on Advanced Micro Devices Inc, obtained through IBM's business negotiations with the company.

He is also accused of passing on information on IBM itself ahead of the company's quarterly results, as well as those of Sun Microsystems while IBM was looking at its books for a possible acquisition. The FBI said Moffat was one of the IBM executives conducting due diligence on Sun.

Rajaratnam is also accused of conspiring with Rajiv Goel, director of strategic investment at Intel's investment arm, and Anil Kumar, a director of powerful management consulting firm McKinsey & Co.

Daniel Lazaroff, business law professor at Loyola Law School, said the case showed how widespread insider trading was, and that often the risk and penalty of getting caught was often not enough to deter them.

"The lesson for these companies is to try to internally monitor what is going on and make it clear that separate and apart from federal or state laws they are going to deal very harshly with these people from an employment standpoint," he said. "And they should have compliance systems in place."

Coincidentally, IBM sells software to aid companies' compliance policies and prevent insider fraud as part of its portfolio of technology services, software and servers.

The case adds to IBM's recent headaches. The U.S. Justice Department said last week that it was investigating allegations that IBM abused its dominance in the mainframe servers market to squeeze rivals.

The news also comes a day after IBM announced quarterly results that beat expectations but disappointed some investors who were not happy with some of the numbers, including a drop in service contract signings, an indication of future sales.

IBM declined to comment. McKinsey said it was "distressed" to learn that Kumar had been arrested, and was looking into the matter. Intel said it was not aware of the case until Friday and had not been contacted by authorities.

Brazil's CBD In 5-Yr Outsourcing Pact With IBM

Brazilian supermarket chain Companhia Brasileira de Distribuicao (CBD, PCAR5.BR), or CBD, signed a partnership with International Business Machines Corp. (IBM) to outsource its information technology, IBM said late Wednesday in a press release.

"The deal, worth about $115 million, was designed by IBM and CBD to meet current business needs and to support the expansion planned for the next years," said IBM.

The five year agreement will transfer two data centers of the retail chain to an IBM Global Delivery Center, based in Hortolandia, Sao Paulo.

CBD is jointly controlled by the Diniz family of Sao Paulo, the chain's founders, and by French retail company Casino Guichard-Perrachon SA (CO.FR). Its main competitors in Brazil include U.S. retail giant Wal-Mart Stores Inc. (WMT) and France's Carrefour SA (CRERY, CA.FR).
Source: WallStreetJournal

Wal-Mart to issue $1 bn IT contract: Sources

Global retail giant Wal-Mart may be all set to issue an IT contract worth USD 1 billion. CNBC-TV18 learns that it will select upto 10 IT vendors for the contract. CNBC-TV18’s Kritika Saxena reports that the contract, for which the bid will open by July 2010, will span across six to eight years. TCS, Infosys, Wipro and HCL Tech emerge as potential bidders along with IBM and Accenture.

However, Wal-Mart says they do not engage in speculation about IT activities in India.

Here is a verbatim transcript of her comments on CNBC-TV18.

Wal-Mart is all set to issue a large scale IT project. This could be the largest project in the retail space. What we pick up from our sources is that the contract is expected to be valued between USD 800 million to a USD 1 billion. Who are the IT firms?—this is good news for IT companies definitely. It will be too early to talk about the likely contenders but who are the potential bidders?—What we pick up from our sources is that four large-cap Indian IT firms—Infosys, TCS, Wipro and HCL Tech would be looking to bid for this project. Even multi-national firms like IBM and Accenture would be looking to bid for these projects. But these are the potential bidders and it’s way too early to comment for these individual companies, since the bids will be open only by approximately July to August 2010.

If you see the recent activities by British Petroleum and Exxon Mobil in the IT space—they have issued large scale contract of USD 1.5 to USD 1 billion but in the retail space this would be the largest so far.

Wal-Mart and obviously individual IT companies too would be looking to see boost in the revenues after this IT contract. These individual IT companies—the plan is to issue about USD 50-100 million individual contracts as spread across, some would be about USD 250-300 million.

When we contracted Wal-Mart for an official comment on this they said that they have several inquiries about their IT activities in India but they do not comment on individual specifications on this.

IBM wins $200 mn telco services deal in India

IBM said on Wednesday it has won a $200 million deal with India's Datacom Solutions, part of Videocon Industries, to provide IT infrastructure and services. Datacom is rolling out GSM services across India starting this year.

On Tuesday IBM unveiled a seven-year deal with India's IDEA Cellular to provide and operate a service delivery platform for content services to its more than 50 million clients.

"Communication service providers in India ... are choosing IBM to help deliver differentiating services to keep pace with market shifts, customer demand and competitive pressures," Scott Stainken, general manager for IBM's telecoms business, said on the sidelines of a telecoms conference in Geneva.

IBM part of failed UK security project

IBM was the main supplier in a failed project by British intelligence to upgrade its communications system so various organizations and agents in different locations could share information, a report said.

The Register, an online technology publication, said IBM's failure to meet deadlines, as well as security concerns, led the Cabinet Office to scrap the project last year after years of development and write off 24.4 million pounds ($39 million).

IBM declined to comment.

The report said IBM was the lead contractor in the second phase of the SCOPE project, which aimed to bolster collaboration among the branches of British intelligence including the MI5 Security Service, MI6 Secret Intelligence Service, the Government Communications Headquarters, and the Foreign Office.

The UK Intelligence and Security Committee said in its last annual report, presented to Parliament in March, that phase 2 of the SCOPE program had been delayed numerous times and had finally been abandoned.
Courtesy: indiatimes

TechM, IBM, TCS in race for $400-mn Sistema deal

Tech Mahindra, IBM and TCS are vying for a $400-million (Rs 1,800 crore) IT outsourcing contract from Sistema Shyam Teleservices (SSTL), said a person familiar with the matter.

Negotiations are on with these companies for a 10-year deal, but the contract will contain a clause that will allow Sistema Shyam to exit after five years, he said, requesting anonymity. Sistema — one of the largest public diversified corporations in Russia and the CIS — has a 74% stake in the JV with the Shyam Group that offers mobile services under the ‘MTS’ brand in India. Sistema Shyam is the only CDMA player, among the new crop of telecom operators.

“A final decision on the deal is expected to be taken by the year-end,” said Rajeev Batra, chief information officer of SSTL. He confirmed that these three IT companies were in the reckoning for the contract, but did not confirm the value of the contract.

The proposed deal will not include the operator’s BPO operations, as the telco has already outsourced its customer care operations to Essar Group’s Aegis BPO.

The winning company will manage SSTL’s IT systems across the 22 telecom circles in the country. SSTL, which is scheduled to launch telephony services in Delhi next month, plans to be a pan-India operator by the third quarter of next year. While a senior Tech Mahindra executive confirmed that the talks with SSTL were on, the TCS spokesperson declined to comment. But, TCS had earlier said it was aggressively chasing deals in telecom, financial services, life sciences and retail.

IT major IBM, too, did comment on being in the race for the SSTL contract. Early this year, SSTL had tied up with IBM for designing and building its green data centres in Chennai and Gurgaon.

SSTL executives said the company was exploring an operating expenditure model for this IT outsourcing contract. This model of outsourcing is considered more cost-efficient for companies since it allows the IT partner to take the telco’s IT assets on its books. While SSTL is yet to award its IT contract, most other new operators have already done so. Etisalat DB recently awarded the contract worth $400 million to Tech Mahindra, while Datacom’s IT infrastructure management has been awarded to IBM for about $200 million.

Unitech Wireless, in which Norway’s Telenor holds a controlling stake, has outsourced its IT infrastructure management to Wipro for about $500 million.

SSTL was among the nine new companies that were given licenses early past year to launch mobile services. So far, the company has launched CDMA-based services in six circles and has about two million customers in its network.

The country has seven pan-India mobile phone operators led by Bharti Airtel, Reliance Communications (RCOM) and Vodafone Essar. A string of new players like Datacom, Loop, S Tel, Unitech Wireless and Swan are also in the process of rolling out nationwide services.

The country has close to 450 million mobile subscribers and a telecom penetration of over 41%.

India to lead 2nd wave of IT adoption: IBM

India may lead the second wave of IT (information technology) adoption as companies here kept up investments despite the recession and seemed more forward-looking than their counterparts globally, according to IBM Corp.

Forty per cent of Indian companies, surveyed by IBM in July, said they wanted to be first to adopt a new technology, while only 11 per cent said they would wait till technology was widely available.

"In India, companies have cut back less and have really continued their investments. I think India is poised to lead the second wave of IT adoption and small-and-medium businesses (SMBs) are the engines driving this economic growth," IBM Corp's Vice President General Business and Marketing said.

"I know of many companies that suffered from the recession but Indian companies have continued and survived...because they seem to be more forward-looking than their counterparts in the West and round the world," Channa said.

The recession had forced 37 per cent companies world-wide to slash their IT budgets compared to only 15 per cent in India, the survey said.

The US-based multinational has identified India as one of its major growth markets and will continue to invest here along with Brazil, China and Russia.

"We embarked on a geographical expansion in India and opened 13 new offices in Tier II cities. We will continue to invest here and in other growth markets, mainly BRIC countries," IBM India/South Asia Director Ramesh Narasimhan said.

IBM intends to cash in on the business coming from SMBs, which represent more than 90 per cent of all businesses and employ over 90 per cent of the world's workforce, producing more patents than large firms.

IBM's General Business unit accounts for about 20 per cent of the company's total revenue world-wide and is one of the fastest growing units for IBM India.

"The SMB market is, and will remain, a key focus for IBM India. Mid-size business is important to IBM as 75 per cent of the worlds GDP comes from SMBs," Channa said.

Today, companies are under pressure to act quickly in response to economic uncertainty and maximise returns on their investments while improving service to customers, at lower risk and reduced budgets, he added.

"We are reducing cost, improving service delivery and enabling business innovation for SMBs. IBM will continue to invest in the mid-market," Channa said.

TechM, Wipro, IBM vie for $400-m Loop Tele deal

LOOP Telecom, where the Essar Group has a stake, has shortlisted Tech Mahindra, Wipro and IBM for an IT outsourcing contract worth around $400 million. The contract is believed to be spread across a period of 10 years and will not include Loop Mobile’s operations, said two industry officials familiar with the deal. Loop Mobile provides cellular services in Mumbai, while operations in the rest of the country is under Loop Telecom.

The outsourcing contract is for the telco’s system integration and maintenance of IT systems across 22 cellular circles. This deal does not include BPO services since most of the back-end operations are done by Essar Group’s Aegis BPO. Loop Telecom has recently launched its services, selectively in Tamil Nadu, Orissa, Kerala and Karnataka.

A Wipro spokesperson said the company was in talks with a few telcos and would not comment on specific engagements, while Tech Mahindra and IBM declined comment on the deal.

A Loop Telecom spokesperson said, “We are constantly exploring ways to enhance our business model, launch plans and operational decisions and regularly engage in dialogue with vendors to help us build a compelling proposition. Nothing has been finalised in terms of partners or the contract amount. An announcement on our IT contract will be made as and when it gets firmed up.”

Loop Telecom is believed to be exploring an operating expenditure (opex) model, under which the shortlisted players can take Loop Telecom’s IT assets on its books. “They could either rent or lease the assets back to the client,” said a person familiar with the deal. This model of outsourcing is considered more cost-effective for companies. The telecom company has already outsourced its network infrastructure to China’s ZTE and Huawei Technologies.

Loop Mobile, earlier known as BPL Mobile, has a subscriber base of 2.4 million in the Mumbai circle, for which it already has an in-house team of IT professionals.

“The request for proposal (RFP) did not mention providing IT services to Loop Mobile, but to other 22 circles. While the company has had a soft launch in four circles, it will scale it up after finalising on the IT vendor,” said
another official familiar with the contract.

The domestic market has been the focus of many IT service providers after a decline in exports from the US and Europe, apart from a host of new companies launching mobile services in India. These new entrants have kept the order book running for IT companies. Earlier, Wipro had bagged a full IT outsourcing project from Unitech Wireless worth approximately Rs 2,500 crore over a nine-year period.

Leaked documents show IBM has laid off more than 9,000

Layoffs at IBM total more than 9,000 for the year. According to leaked copies of the company’s internal “resource action” packages, total verifiable layoffs through Aug. 24 number 9,298.

The company has acknowledged some layoffs, but has steadfastly refused to give details, such as numbers or locations.

Alliance@IBM national coordinator Lee Conrad said additional job cuts – some too small to warrant R.A. packages, some involving contractors – most likely “push the total above 10,000.”

The company appears to be on track to lay off 16,000 North American employees by year’s end – a number that first leaked in early January.
Source: recordonline, localtechwire