IBM hopes to make mobile devices more accessible

IBM is embarking on a research project to design mobile gadgets that are easier to use for people who have disabilities or aren't fully literate.

As part of the project, announced Wednesday, Big Blue will collaborate with India's National Institute of Design and the University of Tokyo's Research Center for Advanced Science and Technology.

The goal is to develop a common interface for mobile devices that will make them easier to use. As digital information becomes more vital, IBM said, it believes the Internet needs to be more accessible to a wider range of people, including those who are illiterate, blind, deaf, and elderly, and those in developing countries.

"Through this collaborative research initiative, we will uncover real information accessibility requirements and issues that the elderly and people in developing economies are facing today," Chieko Asakawa, an IBM Fellow and chief technology officer of IBM's accessibility research, said in a statement. "By focusing on mobile devices, which have a tremendous potential to empower them, we believe the findings will help us offer affordable services to a large population, who are still deprived of access to key information sources."

Any software created by IBM Research and the universities will be released as open source, freely available for governments and businesses to use, said IBM. Big Blue's partnership is part of its Open Collaborative Research program, which teams up the company with universities to develop new and open technologies. The Tokyo center is the first university-based research institute in Japan to join the program, while the National Institute of Design is the second university in India to do so.

IBM researchers in Tokyo and a team from the research center there will focus on making mobile technology easier for Japan's growing elderly population. In India, IBM Research and the design institute will look at ways to help that country's non- and semi-literate population find information through mobile devices.

"By bringing IBM's deep knowledge in mobile web and [the Indian institute's] interface design and ethnological expertise, this initiative is aimed to develop inclusive technologies and help the underprivileged improve their lives," Dr. Jignesh Khakhar of the National Institute of Design said in a statement.

The new research project is just the latest effort by IBM to try to bring technology to people who could be considered outside the mainstream. The company has been recognized in India for its "Spoken Web" technology, which lets people who are illiterate or have vision problems access the Internet by voice.

Source: CNET news

Wipro plans to outdo IBM

Wipro may be the third largest Indian IT company the world over, but it is eyeing the No 1 spot back at home and has got a brand new strategy to outdo the current leader in Indian market, the big blue IBM.

Anand Shankaran, business head of India and ME at Wipro Infotech, said, "There is no slowdown in India. It will be wrong to even talk about recovery."

Bullish is not quite what one expects Indian IT companies to be, given the slowdown in the west, but Wipro Infotech is banking big on the $20 billion Indian IT market.
It believes it can outgrow the current market leader IBM in a year with revenues well over billion dollars.

However, with big billion dollar deals in telecom in India drying up, IT companies are now targeting small and medium businesses, which are over 3 million in number that can add to the revenue kitty.

Wipro Infotech is approaching the SME market with renewed focus, breaking up the market into clusters, which include auto ancillary, textiles, micro finance, hospitality, toys and gems and jewellery.

"We are going to grow 15-20 per cent in India market next year, 15 per cent in products and 20 per cent in services. The idea is to aim for global operations kind of margins. We believe we can get there with critical mass in the medium term," Shankaran said.

India, Middle East and Africa are new focus areas for IT companies like Wipro and the deal pipeline company says is looking solid with 8-10 deals of over $100 million each.

Analysts believe Indian IT companies have no choice but to sharpen their strategies to tap into these growth markets.

Partha Iyengar, regional research director at Gartner India, said, “These are crucial markets. One, because there is growth and also this is where you can demonstrate transformational capabilities and finetune and then you can bag high end work in other markets."

The next big battle for growth between the global and Indian IT companies will be clearly fought in markets like India, Middle East and Africa.

No wonder Indian IT companies like Wipro, who have so far played catch up with global peers, are now putting all their might into devising strategies that will keep them ahead in the curve.

Source: NDVT Profit

IT Outsourcing in 2010: Smaller Deals, Higher volume

by: Outsourcing Insider February 26, 2010

Last year the economic downturn caused some organizations to temporarily scale back on IT outsourcing efforts while they tackled more fundamental issues like keeping the company afloat.

This year, IT outsourcing is making a comeback... in Asia.

Dell Services (DELL) Chairman Jim Champy predicts the Asian IT outsourcing market will grow much faster in 2010. “IT outsourcing is set to rise in Asia as the region's companies begin to modernize business processes and technology systems in a build-out that could last decades. We see, as most providers do, the Asian markets growing faster - clearly more than Europe, and certainly faster than the US,” explains Mr. Champy.

Offshore service providers who made significant investments in technology-related matters may have made the right move at the right time. As firms are already taking steps to outsource some information technology functions. One of them is U.S.-based commercial aircraft equipment manufacturer, Spirit AeroSystems (SPR), where some of its employees affected by the outsourcing plan will be offered jobs with International Business Machines Corporation (IBM) or Hewlett-Packard (HPQ) –the providers taking over Spirit’s IT work, both of which have operations in Asia. Spirit spokesperson Ken Evans admits to not ruling out additional work that may be sourced out to offshore providers in the future.

A report from KPMG and the Asian-Oceanian Computing Industry forecasts that Asia will account for 26.3% of the total consumption of IT and BPO services in the next 10 years. In the last quarter of 2009, Accenture (ACN) and Capgemini expanded their presence in Asia particularly in the IT services segment. This proves that clients and partners remain attracted to the abundance of technical skills at a low cost.

KPMG’s forecast may happen in the long-run but for the time being service providers are feeling the recovery at smaller proportions but at a higher volume of job requests. According to IBM and Accenture executives, “IT consultants are probably already feeling it: the start of a rebound in business. But there's a difference this time. The rebound is coming mostly in smaller deals rather than in gigantic ones... customers are contracting for a higher volume of smaller jobs.”

Small deals comprise a significant fraction of IBM's and Accenture’s total revenue stream. So it no longer came as a surprise when Accenture acquired RiskControl, a privately held IT consulting company. The acquisition is expected to improve Accenture’s set of risk management services as it tries to gain a strong foothold in the IT offshoring market.

Interestingly, technology vendors acquired technology consulting firms at a quick pace in 2009. Others who made similar acquisitions were Affiliated Computer Services or ACS (ACS), now a Xerox (XRX) company, and Perot Systems (PER). I guess they may all be getting ready to grab a chunk of the incoming deals.

Source: Seeking Alpha