Reporter's Diary

Idhries Ahmad and Pratima Harigunani MUMBAI, INDIA: Distinguished Indian writer and diplomat Shashi Tharoor congratulated India’s response to the recent two attacks on India’s image globally. While speaking at the NASSCOM India Leadership Forum here today, he said that both the industry and the government of India have ensured an effective response to the Satyam episode as well as the Mumbai terror attack. … Read entire article »

NEW DELHI, INDIA: The 17th edition of NASSCOM India Leadership Forum, the flagship event of NASSCOM, is being held at a very critical juncture in the short yet exciting history of Indian IT/BPO industry. Recession in US and downturn in India is exerting lot of pressure on Indian IT/BPO industry, to devise a calibrated strategy to come out of the uncertain times unscathed. … Read entire article »

NEW DELHI, INDIA: Intelligroup, a global provider of business consulting, technology, and outsourcing services has been consistently included in the in the ‘Strong Performers’ category and received high client satisfaction scores by leading industry research firms. The company has operations in the Americas, Japan, AsiaPacific, and Europe and is present in India in Hyderabad and Bangalore and has plans to setup a new centre in Pune. … Read entire article »

Lydian Data Services is now Headstrong Business Services Idhries Ahmad NEW DELHI, INDIA: Global financial services consulting firm, Headstrong has acquired the Lydian Data services, a privately owned diversified financial services firm. Lydian Data Services provides Business Process Outsourcing, business connectivity and transaction management solutions to mortgage originators, secondary market conduits and investors. The company specialises in mortgage data connectivity solutions, mortgage data management, core banking data integration and loan transfer systems. … Read entire article »

Steria’s solutions for credit card fraud management, Airport management system and command and control solutions for police makes sense for Indian markets Idhries Ahmad NEW DELHI, INDIA: Europe based IT services company, Steria will be aggressively targeting the opportunity thrown by domestic Indian market in 2009. The formerly Xansa, is also giving final touches to its center of excellence in retail in India, which will start soon. The company will also be doubling its head count in India by 2011. Speaking to CIOL, Mukesh Aghi, chairman and chief executive officer, Steria, said going forward, Indian domestic market will throw up huge opportunities and as company, Steria cannot afford to ignore those opportunities. … Read entire article »

The low hanging fruit in US is almost gone and it is time Indian IT companies re iron their European strategy, for the journey is going to be difficult Idhries Ahmad NEW DELHI, INDIA: The uncertainties in US market coupled with the not so comfortable noises from new US president about off shoring, means Europe for time being finds itself finally perched atop the agenda for many Indian service providers, who hitherto hadn’t worried to fish in troubled waters. However, outsourcing market in Europe, is not going to be low hanging fruit like it was in US and Indian service providers have to work hard to capture market. … Read entire article »

Invest in technologies, where payback is closer to the horizon Idhries Ahmad NEW DELHI, INDIA: In the first part of our speaker series for CIOL C Change 2009, Idhries Ahmad of CIOL catches up with Prasanto Kumar Roy, President & Chief Editor, ICT Publications, CyberMedia. Roy, a veteran in enterprise technology trends, and with more than twenty years experience in writing for CIO community, feels the current uncertain times will be putting enormous pressure on CIO across the board to deliver faster with whatever resources they have been already allocated. “If certain level of service was acceptable in better times, the tolerance to service level violations now will be extremely low ,”says Roy Roy also points that, going forward this year, CIO will be expected to make significant contributions in helping companies achieve higher growth … Read entire article »

NEW DELHI, INDIA: British Telecom is excited about Indian market opportunity and is targeting twenty percent of networked IT market in India, which BT expect to be around 24 billion Euro in 2010-11. The company has also ruled out any lay offs in India in response to the global slow down and expects to continue its positive momentum in the country. British Telecom had recently announced that it would cut 10,000 jobs by March 2009, following an 11 per cent dip in its profit after tax for the first half of the current financial year. The company had laid off 4000 employees directly recruited by BT and remaining 6000 which were on the job rolls of contractors, consultants and agency staff working for BT. Speaking to CIOL, Allen Ma, President, BT Asia Pacific, … Read entire article »

As a test engineer, you play an important role in ensuring that the final software application or product meets the desired quality standards, and the success or failure of the application or product largely depends on its quality Idhries AhmadNEW DELHI, INDIA: Software testers have traditionally thought off by their more ‘advantaged’ developer community as some ones who don’t get involved in high-end and challenging work, and hence don’t deserve the attention and recognition that they themselves command. However, Ramanna, strongly feels that software testers are no less cerebral to software developers when it comes to their contribution to the software development life-cycle activity. The notion  “Testing is inferior to development, says Ramana,  is pure myth and needs to be corrected. “Software testing is as important as any other software development lifecycle activity. … Read entire article »

Recession rather than a threat, should be seen as blessing in disguise by CIO’s as it is forcing them to have a re-look at their existing IT infrastructure and fine tune it to streamline processes, improve productivity and reduce costs Idhries Ahmad NEW DELHI, INDIA: Current uncertain times are putting extreme pressures on CIO’s across verticals to make sure IT investments already made or planned are optimised to the hilt. Making every dollar count, puts onus on CIO to go for prudent IT infrastructure restructuring and re- tuning it to help company save costs and ride over the tough times. Allen Ma, President, BT Asia Pacific, feels, recession rather than a threat, should be seen as blessing in disguise by CIO’s as it is forcing them to have a re-look at their … Read entire article »