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Mastek sees flat revenue for March quarter: CEO
February 11, 2010
Source: ET Bureau
MUMBAI: Software services firm Mastek sees a flat revenue of Rs 1.88-1.95 billion for the January-March quarter, a top official said on Wednesday. The company had a revenue of Rs 1.93 billion for the December quarter, Farid Kazani, group chief financial officer said on the sidelines of Nasscom summit.
“That is typically flattish in revenue terms but in rupee terms it is a 2.5% appreciation, taking rupee assumption at 45.50 (versus dollar),” he said.
“Our business is definitely slower. The pick-up momentum has not yet happened, it’s taking time, which is why we are guided to a flatish revenue this quarter.
Hopefully, we should see momentum picking up in the next two quarters.” The company is also providing selective salary hikes in the range of 6-7%, effective February 1. Mastek has identified certain critical operations for offering the salary hike, across regions like India, the US and the UK.
“The impact of salary increase is taken in the guidance (for the quarter).. We will be able get some kind of improvement on the other cost structures,” Mr Kazani said.
The company is expecting some improvement in margins in this quarter. However, this will depend on the real revenues, including the foreign exchange fluctuations. “Margin will depend on how much we are able to get in the right time and the right quantum. There are three impacts, how the revenue will grow, how the FX (forex) will play out, and how the areas of improvement (are) linked to offsetting of salary increase,” he said.
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India to go the ‘cloud’ way for e-governance
February 11, 2010
Source: ET Bureau
MUMBAI: India might soon become the first country in the world to deliver e-governance services to citizens using cloud-based IT services. The government is having a dialogue with the apex software industry body, Nasscom, on how to roll out e-governance services using this emerging technology, which fast gaining acceptance among enterprises for its affordability and ability to address large numbers of transactions. “A collaboration on e-governance via cloud technologies may include 90% of the citizen services, which have not yet been rolled out. It will also make project execution faster,” R Chandrashekhar, secretary for IT, ministry of it and communications, told ET in an exclusive interview.
The advantage of using this technology is that the IT infrastructure need not be set up by the government. In addition, because of the ability of the technology to handle large number of transactions and citizens can look forward to less congestion bottlenecks. For instance, simple tasks like booking a rail tickets online, which are extremely slow during peak hours now, will no longer be a bottleneck.
The government’s plan to roll out e-governance and citizen services through cloud computing will open a new market for players like IBM, Salesforce.com and Microsoft, and Indian players such as TCS, Infosys and Wipro. “A collaboration on e-governance via cloud technologies may include 90% of the citizen services. Only about 10% of the services are fully rolled out. It will make projects go online faster,” he added.
Rolling out e-governance services through the cloud may reduce project costs but Mr Chandrashekhar said the priority would be roll out services faster rather than cost optimisation.
The industry players seem to welcome the government’s move. NIIT, which is partnering with Hitachi to roll out cloud services, said that it would be interested. Wipro has also rolled out a private cloud for clients, and might pitch in. Nasscom also appreciated the initiative.
“It would be a great move. And we will help the government if possible,” said Arvind Thakur, CEO of NIIT Technologies. NIIT has a partnership with Hitachi for cloud-based services. A Wipro official said the company had done similar work for a business client and would also be interested in partnering with the government.
US-based TowerGroup’s senior research director, Rodney Nelsestuen, said India is in a unique situation to leverage cloud computing. “US Federal CIO, Vivek Kundra, has been assigned the task of removing duplication of information and rationalising IT costs via a cloud. India is doing it at the right time as it does not have a problem of legacy systems,” he said. Globally many popular online applications have already gone on the cloud. For instance, Twitter.com, Skype.com, Facebook, Google and Yahoo Maps all use cloud computing. Now e-governance via the cloud may improve lives of citizens.
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India's IT-BPO market may touch $285 bn in 2020: Report
February 11, 2010
Source: PTI
MUMBAI: India's IT-BPO market (including exports) could touch USD 285 billion in 2020 growing at a CAGR of 15 per cent, according to a report.
The IT-BPO industry in India has achieved impressive growth rates over the past decade and stood at USD 71.6 billion in 2009, said the report prepared by KPMG and ASOCIO (Asian-Oceanian Computing Industry Organisation).
The report, `Asia-Oceania Vision 2020: Enabling IT Leadership Through Collaboration' was released here today at NASSCOM India Leadership Forum 2010.
India is the current market leader in global sourcing supply, serving approximately 51 per cent of overall global sourcing demand.
"India is expected to achieve double-digit growth in the IT-BPO industry, with a focus on innovation. The country, however, needs to sustain cost competitiveness and develop the requisite skills of its large workforce," Kumar Parakala, Global Head of Sourcing Advisory, KPMG in India, said.
"India could also develop complementary skills in hardware, so that it can showcase a more diversified portfolio of products and services."
The report highlighted that the composition of demand will undergo a change from 2008 to 2020. The contribution of some of the developed countries like Japan, Australia and New Zealand in the regional demand for IT-BPO service is likely to decrease.
However, the contribution of developing countries like India and Thailand is expected to increase in the coming years. Countries such as Sri Lanka, Pakistan and Bangladesh are also expected to make their mark on the global sourcing supply landscape by 2020, it said.
According to NASSCOM, the Indian IT-BPO industry should aim to drive innovation, in addition to retaining its competitiveness. In order to successfully achieve its goal, key stakeholders of the Indian IT-BPO industry need to address the issues currently faced by the industry.
One of the focus areas of the KPMG-ASOCIO report was to identify the potential for effective collaboration among countries of the Asia-Oceania region. The report emphasises that if diversity within the region is effectively leveraged it could lead to collaborative growth.
Collaboration is likely to act as a facilitator for nations to address common challenges, leverage each others' competitive advantage and thereby aim for a much larger target market in the Information, Communication and Technology (ICT) industry by 2020, it said.
"ICT based transformation would be a major enabler of socio-economic transformation of Asia. We foresee an emergence of a diverse set of globally competitive IT organisations in the region, which would be the key enablers of this IT-based transformation," ASOCIO President Ashank Desai said.
Even as total demand for global sourcing services is expected to grow by 4.9 per cent every year from 2008 to 2020, demand from Asia-Oceania countries may grow by around 7 per cent every year in the same period.
This will take the contribution of Asia-Oceania countries in the total global sourcing demand from 20 per cent in 2008 to around 26 per cent by 2020, the report said.
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