2009 InfoWorld 100 Awards: IT remains the lifeblood of forward-thinking organizations, as this year's recipients of InfoWorld's highest honor attest
Accenture
Unified Collaboration Initiative
Project lead: Frank B. Modruson, CIO
Project description: Accenture developed Accenture Client Exchange, a communications and collaboration platform that provides employees and clients presence, secure IM, voice and videoconferencing, virtual desktop sharing, and network-enabled phone functionality based on technology from Microsoft and Cisco.
Industry: Services
Activision Blizzard
WAN-Optimized Development Initiative
Project lead: Thomas Fenady, Senior Director of IT
Project description: Activision Blizzard increased the efficiency of its worldwide development efforts by revamping its network and moving away from MPLS (multiprotocol label switching) and DS3s (Digital Signal 3) in favor of WAN optimization technology from Riverbed.
Industry: Entertainment
ADP
Client Service Initiative
Project lead: Jeff Mullins, Vice President, Field Automation Engineering
Project description: ADP developed Workspace Manager, a unified customer service agent desktop built on Microsoft .Net and integrating Web, Java, Win32, mainframe, and legacy applications within a single user interface, while supporting the development of new composite application interfaces and eliminating the need for client service agents to individually log into 17 Citrix Presentation Server infrastructures.
Industry: Services
Click here to read complete list from InfoWorld
Monday, December 28, 2009
IT market
Satyam, slowdowns make 2009 hard for software industry
The Satyam Computer accounting scam, slowdown and resultant hiring freeze by many made 2009 a forgettable year for the Indian Information Technology industry.
There was never a dull moment for bad news during the year, given the fact that Satyam's founder B Ramalinga Raju came out of the closet with an accounting fraud on January 7. The scam tarnished the credibility of India's IT story, requiring others to do a lot of convincing to retain clients.
As dramatic it was, the World Bank, within a week of the Satyam scam coming to light, announced it had banned, besides Satyam, Wipro and Megasoft from working for it for allegedly "providing improper benefits to the Bank staff" during the course of their projects with it. While the cases dated back to mid-2007, the timing of the disclosures only helped compound the woes of the IT industry.
To give the government its due credit, it acted swiftly by superseding the Satyam Board, which brought in new auditors to restate accounts, and ascertained employee count and within months found a new owner in Tech Mahindra. Satyam has since been renamed Mahindra Satyam.
Multiple agencies probed the scam, whose size was initially estimated at Rs 7,800 crore, and Raju, once a celebrated IT icon, is in custody awaiting trial.
2009 also saw the software exporting community trying hard to keep their margins as clients cut down on IT spends. The huge forex losses due to fluctuation of rupee didn't help them either.
Bulk of IT companies' revenue comes from the US and Europe and they earn more when the dollar is stronger.
Although the dollar was stronger, many of them had hedged against a stronger rupee - which it was in 2007 - thus losing out any which way.
The fallout of this was that top Indian IT companies, which used to hire up to 25,000 people annually, put recruitment on hold. Many of them, including Infosys, postponed campus recruitments.
Talking of Infosys, its poster-boy Nandan Nilekani left the IT company he helped found to join the government for a project to give every Indian citizen a unique identity number.
Globally, the industry saw a few mergers and acquisitions. In April, US business software company Oracle Corporation announced that it would buy its Silicon Valley rival Sun Microsystems for $7.4 billion in cash.
The takeover has moved Oracle, the world's second-largest software maker, into the server and storage computers market, placing it against IBM and Hewlett-Packard.
In September, the world's second largest PC maker Dell Inc entered into an agreement to acquire computer services firm Perot Systems for about $3.9 billion, making it one of the biggest deals in the IT space since the global financial turmoil hit the sector. The acquisition was aimed at helping Dell foray into the software space.
Copier major Xerox Corporation announced that it will acquire outsourcing entity Affiliated Computer Services (ACS) for about $6.4 billion in a cash and stock deal.
Indian IT industry is passing through a difficult phase. Shrinking budgets, pressure on revenues and bottomline, competition from global bigwigs are staring at the home-grown software multinationals who have to adjust to a new scenario than the one they have been used to so far.
In a way, the game is just beginning now.
There was never a dull moment for bad news during the year, given the fact that Satyam's founder B Ramalinga Raju came out of the closet with an accounting fraud on January 7. The scam tarnished the credibility of India's IT story, requiring others to do a lot of convincing to retain clients.
As dramatic it was, the World Bank, within a week of the Satyam scam coming to light, announced it had banned, besides Satyam, Wipro and Megasoft from working for it for allegedly "providing improper benefits to the Bank staff" during the course of their projects with it. While the cases dated back to mid-2007, the timing of the disclosures only helped compound the woes of the IT industry.
To give the government its due credit, it acted swiftly by superseding the Satyam Board, which brought in new auditors to restate accounts, and ascertained employee count and within months found a new owner in Tech Mahindra. Satyam has since been renamed Mahindra Satyam.
Multiple agencies probed the scam, whose size was initially estimated at Rs 7,800 crore, and Raju, once a celebrated IT icon, is in custody awaiting trial.
2009 also saw the software exporting community trying hard to keep their margins as clients cut down on IT spends. The huge forex losses due to fluctuation of rupee didn't help them either.
Bulk of IT companies' revenue comes from the US and Europe and they earn more when the dollar is stronger.
Although the dollar was stronger, many of them had hedged against a stronger rupee - which it was in 2007 - thus losing out any which way.
The fallout of this was that top Indian IT companies, which used to hire up to 25,000 people annually, put recruitment on hold. Many of them, including Infosys, postponed campus recruitments.
Talking of Infosys, its poster-boy Nandan Nilekani left the IT company he helped found to join the government for a project to give every Indian citizen a unique identity number.
Globally, the industry saw a few mergers and acquisitions. In April, US business software company Oracle Corporation announced that it would buy its Silicon Valley rival Sun Microsystems for $7.4 billion in cash.
The takeover has moved Oracle, the world's second-largest software maker, into the server and storage computers market, placing it against IBM and Hewlett-Packard.
In September, the world's second largest PC maker Dell Inc entered into an agreement to acquire computer services firm Perot Systems for about $3.9 billion, making it one of the biggest deals in the IT space since the global financial turmoil hit the sector. The acquisition was aimed at helping Dell foray into the software space.
Copier major Xerox Corporation announced that it will acquire outsourcing entity Affiliated Computer Services (ACS) for about $6.4 billion in a cash and stock deal.
Indian IT industry is passing through a difficult phase. Shrinking budgets, pressure on revenues and bottomline, competition from global bigwigs are staring at the home-grown software multinationals who have to adjust to a new scenario than the one they have been used to so far.
In a way, the game is just beginning now.
Accenture, Infosys, TCS, Wipro
Wipro, TCS, Infy plan to follow rival Accenture's sales model
India’s top tech firms, including Wipro, plan to follow rival Accenture’s sales model by hiring senior partners with a few decades of experience and capable of having a dialogue with chief executives of customer organisations, a shift from the earlier focus on selling services to IT heads of leading customers such as Citigroup and General Electric.
Wipro, which serves customers such as British Petroleum (BP) and Citi, has hired around a dozen senior partners from rivals Accenture, Ernst & Young and Deloitte over the past few months. Girish S Paranjpe, the company’s joint chief executive, told ET in an interview that his company would hire another 30 such partners in 2010.
Some senior professionals who have joined Wipro during the past few months as part of the company’s new sales strategy include Kirk Strawser, managing partner and global head, Wipro Consulting Services; Chris Rooney, global practice head, business transformation; and Roger Camrass, senior practice partner, business transformation.
“We often lost because of having pure CIO-level dialogues, we got hurt and even lost some deals,” he said. “We will hire another 30-40 such professionals who will be responsible for growing our client relationships to $30-40 million in revenues,” he added.
For many years, TCS, Infosys and Wipro have been focused on software application development and maintenance, getting new business from CIOs of large customers such as Citi, GE and many others. As they now seek bigger, multi-year transformational deals, they need to penetrate boardrooms of Fortune-500 companies.
“Client partners think and breathe business problems of customers who seek advise and guidance—they are people with a few decades of experience,” Mr Paranjpe added.
In a year when business was hard to come by, Wipro managed to penetrate large customers such as BP, helped by the new approach. Camrass, who joined Wipro as senior practice partner a few months ago, is respected by many decisionmakers within BP. With over 35 years of experience, Mr Camrass has worked with top consulting firms such as Ernst & Young.
India’s biggest software exporter, TCS, once perceived as a slow-moving IT behemoth, is also recruiting these partner-profile people, according to an industry analyst who wished to remain anonymous.
According to R Suresh, MD of executive search firm Stanton Chase, all top IT firms are looking at hiring partner-level people. “One of the reasons is they are winning huge long-term IT outsourcing contracts. These are annuity-based contracts and the client needs to see the same face when he’s interacting with the service provider,” he said.
Unlike the traditional Accenture model, Indian companies are hiring these professionals more as ‘client partners’, and not necessarily ‘equity partners’, added Mr Suresh.
Experts such as John C McCarthy, vice-president and principal analyst of Forrester Research, say Indian firms need to shift from having pure technology-based dialogues and work on their sales and marketing efforts. “This will be one of the biggest cultural shifts—these companies need to intensify their sales and marketing efforts,” he said.
Indeed, by engaging with top business leaders at a customer organisation, Accenture creates entry barriers for other suppliers. “Accenture’s partner-driven sales model is the ultimate form of client engagement,” Edelweiss analysts Viju George, Kunal Sangoi and Pratik Gandhi noted in their September report. Today, the common sales structure of the big three Indian tech firms is typically three-tiered—overall vertical head, client director in overall charge of client relationship, and multiple account managers handling different facets of the relationship.
Source: EconomicTimes
Wipro, which serves customers such as British Petroleum (BP) and Citi, has hired around a dozen senior partners from rivals Accenture, Ernst & Young and Deloitte over the past few months. Girish S Paranjpe, the company’s joint chief executive, told ET in an interview that his company would hire another 30 such partners in 2010.
Some senior professionals who have joined Wipro during the past few months as part of the company’s new sales strategy include Kirk Strawser, managing partner and global head, Wipro Consulting Services; Chris Rooney, global practice head, business transformation; and Roger Camrass, senior practice partner, business transformation.
“We often lost because of having pure CIO-level dialogues, we got hurt and even lost some deals,” he said. “We will hire another 30-40 such professionals who will be responsible for growing our client relationships to $30-40 million in revenues,” he added.
For many years, TCS, Infosys and Wipro have been focused on software application development and maintenance, getting new business from CIOs of large customers such as Citi, GE and many others. As they now seek bigger, multi-year transformational deals, they need to penetrate boardrooms of Fortune-500 companies.
“Client partners think and breathe business problems of customers who seek advise and guidance—they are people with a few decades of experience,” Mr Paranjpe added.
In a year when business was hard to come by, Wipro managed to penetrate large customers such as BP, helped by the new approach. Camrass, who joined Wipro as senior practice partner a few months ago, is respected by many decisionmakers within BP. With over 35 years of experience, Mr Camrass has worked with top consulting firms such as Ernst & Young.
India’s biggest software exporter, TCS, once perceived as a slow-moving IT behemoth, is also recruiting these partner-profile people, according to an industry analyst who wished to remain anonymous.
According to R Suresh, MD of executive search firm Stanton Chase, all top IT firms are looking at hiring partner-level people. “One of the reasons is they are winning huge long-term IT outsourcing contracts. These are annuity-based contracts and the client needs to see the same face when he’s interacting with the service provider,” he said.
Unlike the traditional Accenture model, Indian companies are hiring these professionals more as ‘client partners’, and not necessarily ‘equity partners’, added Mr Suresh.
Experts such as John C McCarthy, vice-president and principal analyst of Forrester Research, say Indian firms need to shift from having pure technology-based dialogues and work on their sales and marketing efforts. “This will be one of the biggest cultural shifts—these companies need to intensify their sales and marketing efforts,” he said.
Indeed, by engaging with top business leaders at a customer organisation, Accenture creates entry barriers for other suppliers. “Accenture’s partner-driven sales model is the ultimate form of client engagement,” Edelweiss analysts Viju George, Kunal Sangoi and Pratik Gandhi noted in their September report. Today, the common sales structure of the big three Indian tech firms is typically three-tiered—overall vertical head, client director in overall charge of client relationship, and multiple account managers handling different facets of the relationship.
Source: EconomicTimes
CTS, new openings
Cognizant makes 700 job offers at Anna Univ campus
IT services major, Cognizant on Tuesday announced that it has made 700 job offers to students of Anna University’s constituent colleges in Chennai.
Coming in the top slot among bulk recruiters, Cognizant picked up the students through a two-day long campus recruitment process covering students from almost all branches of the UG and PG programmes.
Welcoming the ‘future Cognizant associates," Cognizant corporate marketing and research VP R Ramkumar said Anna University, along with its constituent colleges, is the largest contributor to Cognizant’s talent pool of fresh graduates in each of the last several years across India.
"It is with justifiable pride that we can say that the alumni of this reputable institution, along with several others globally, have helped sculpt Cognizant with a difference," he said handing over the list of selected students to the University vice-chancellor, Prof R Mannar Jawahar.
"One critical aspect of our recruiting is the fact that we are branch/discipline agnostic. This helps us substantially today in solving the business problems of customers across industries by leveraging technology. With structural changes happening across industries and sub-industries, there is an increasing need for much deeper domain specialisation.," Mr Ramkumar added.
Noting that in addition to students from core circuit branches (computing, electronic, electrical and instrumentation), he said the students from different disciplines of study added immense value to Cognizant.
Coming in the top slot among bulk recruiters, Cognizant picked up the students through a two-day long campus recruitment process covering students from almost all branches of the UG and PG programmes.
Welcoming the ‘future Cognizant associates," Cognizant corporate marketing and research VP R Ramkumar said Anna University, along with its constituent colleges, is the largest contributor to Cognizant’s talent pool of fresh graduates in each of the last several years across India.
"It is with justifiable pride that we can say that the alumni of this reputable institution, along with several others globally, have helped sculpt Cognizant with a difference," he said handing over the list of selected students to the University vice-chancellor, Prof R Mannar Jawahar.
"One critical aspect of our recruiting is the fact that we are branch/discipline agnostic. This helps us substantially today in solving the business problems of customers across industries by leveraging technology. With structural changes happening across industries and sub-industries, there is an increasing need for much deeper domain specialisation.," Mr Ramkumar added.
Noting that in addition to students from core circuit branches (computing, electronic, electrical and instrumentation), he said the students from different disciplines of study added immense value to Cognizant.
Layoffs in USA
Berkshire cuts 21k jobs in '09
Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway reported 21,000 fewer employees than it had at the end of 2008 amid a slump at the firm's manufacturing and retail units.
Berkshire and its subsidiaries have about 225,000 workers, the company said this week in regulatory filings. That is 8.6 per cent lower than the 246,083 disclosed in the 2008 annual report. Berkshire provided the jobs information in a document tied to its planned $26 billion takeover of railroad Burlington Northern Santa Fe Buffett did not reply to a request, left with an assistant, for comment on the cuts.
Buffett, Berkshire’s CEO, oversees a collection of more than 70 subsidiaries that sell products including Geico car insurance, Fruit of the Loom T-shirts and Dairy Queen ice cream. Profit at the firm's manufacturing, service and retail businesses plunged by more than half in the first nine months of the year, and Buffett replaced the CEOs of two operating units whose sales suffered in the recession.
"When times are good, you are going to have more people employed than when times are bad," Buffett, 79, said this month in a video address to the 37,000 railroad employees that Berkshire will take on next year with the completion of the Burlington Northern takeover.
Fruit of the Loom announced in March it would lay off 3,000 textile workers in El Salvador because of excess inventory, La Prensa Grafica reported, citing Jose Antonio Escobar, president of Camara de la Industria Textil y de la Confeccion de El Salvador.The newspaper reported on December 3 that the company plans to hire back 1,000 workers.
Fruit of the Loom had more than 34,000 workers at the end of 2008, according to Berkshires most recent annual report, the largest total among its operating units. John Shivel, a spokesman for Bowling Green, Kentuckybased Fruit of the Loom, declined to comment.
Buffett told shareholders at the firm's annual meeting in May that he expected more cuts at Berkshire following reductions last year at Clayton Homes Inc, which builds manufactured housing, and brickmaker Acme Building Brands. Berkshire reported its first quarterly loss since 2001 in the first three months of this year. The firm returned to profit in the second and third quarters, helped by an advance in the stock market.
"We will be adding people at some point, but we will not do it until we see the demand come back," Buffett said in a September interview conducted by the CEO of Business Wire. "It will be a little slow because we do not want to go through what we did before. Although, I will guarantee you that three years from now, our brick companies, our carpet company, and our insulation company will all be employing far more people than now."
Berkshire and its subsidiaries have about 225,000 workers, the company said this week in regulatory filings. That is 8.6 per cent lower than the 246,083 disclosed in the 2008 annual report. Berkshire provided the jobs information in a document tied to its planned $26 billion takeover of railroad Burlington Northern Santa Fe Buffett did not reply to a request, left with an assistant, for comment on the cuts.
Buffett, Berkshire’s CEO, oversees a collection of more than 70 subsidiaries that sell products including Geico car insurance, Fruit of the Loom T-shirts and Dairy Queen ice cream. Profit at the firm's manufacturing, service and retail businesses plunged by more than half in the first nine months of the year, and Buffett replaced the CEOs of two operating units whose sales suffered in the recession.
"When times are good, you are going to have more people employed than when times are bad," Buffett, 79, said this month in a video address to the 37,000 railroad employees that Berkshire will take on next year with the completion of the Burlington Northern takeover.
Fruit of the Loom announced in March it would lay off 3,000 textile workers in El Salvador because of excess inventory, La Prensa Grafica reported, citing Jose Antonio Escobar, president of Camara de la Industria Textil y de la Confeccion de El Salvador.The newspaper reported on December 3 that the company plans to hire back 1,000 workers.
Fruit of the Loom had more than 34,000 workers at the end of 2008, according to Berkshires most recent annual report, the largest total among its operating units. John Shivel, a spokesman for Bowling Green, Kentuckybased Fruit of the Loom, declined to comment.
Buffett told shareholders at the firm's annual meeting in May that he expected more cuts at Berkshire following reductions last year at Clayton Homes Inc, which builds manufactured housing, and brickmaker Acme Building Brands. Berkshire reported its first quarterly loss since 2001 in the first three months of this year. The firm returned to profit in the second and third quarters, helped by an advance in the stock market.
"We will be adding people at some point, but we will not do it until we see the demand come back," Buffett said in a September interview conducted by the CEO of Business Wire. "It will be a little slow because we do not want to go through what we did before. Although, I will guarantee you that three years from now, our brick companies, our carpet company, and our insulation company will all be employing far more people than now."
Infosys, New Deals
Infosys bags $83 mn Karnataka project
Infosys Technologies, India's No. 2 software exporter, has been selected to implement a Rs 3.87 billion ($83 million) IT project for Karnataka's power distribution utilities, two government officials said.
"We have issued the letter of intent to Infosys," a source at the Bangalore utility said on condition of anonymity as he is not authorised to speak to the media.
"It will cover entire Karnataka," he said. The project was awarded by all five electricity distribution utilities in the state last week and will cover 100 towns in the state, he said.
Infosys outbid 10 other companies, including Tata Consultancy Services, for the contract, the source said.
The projects must be implemented within 36 months, the other source said.
Infosys officials could not be reached for comment. The project is part of a central government-funded programme to use information technology to cap electricity losses in the country.
Tata Consultancy and HCL Infosystems Ltd have won contracts for similar projects in West Bengal and Rajasthan, respectively.
"We have issued the letter of intent to Infosys," a source at the Bangalore utility said on condition of anonymity as he is not authorised to speak to the media.
"It will cover entire Karnataka," he said. The project was awarded by all five electricity distribution utilities in the state last week and will cover 100 towns in the state, he said.
Infosys outbid 10 other companies, including Tata Consultancy Services, for the contract, the source said.
The projects must be implemented within 36 months, the other source said.
Infosys officials could not be reached for comment. The project is part of a central government-funded programme to use information technology to cap electricity losses in the country.
Tata Consultancy and HCL Infosystems Ltd have won contracts for similar projects in West Bengal and Rajasthan, respectively.
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