Showing posts with label Asia Pacific. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Asia Pacific. Show all posts

Tuesday, November 17, 2009

IT spending likely to fall 5.2% worldwide, says Gartner

The worldwide IT spending is on pace to decline 5.2 percent this year. However, the IT industry will return to growth in 2010, with IT spending forecast to total $3.3 trillion, a 3.3 percent increase from 2009, according to research firm Gartner. In Asia Pacific, IT spending is expected to grow by five percent to reach $515.6 billion in 2010.

Peter Sondergaard, Senior Vice President at Gartner and Global Head of Research, said that this represented a fast V-shaped recovery for IT spending in the region. Emerging regions will resume strong growth, he said. By 2012, the accelerated IT spending and culturally different approach to IT in Asia will directly influence product features, service structures and the overall IT industry.

However, growth varies considerably by country, vertical market and IT sector. Sondergaard said that while software would post the strongest growth in Asia Pacific, telecommunications still represented the largest area of IT investment.

In Australia, the five-year outlook for enterprise IT spending is a compound annual growth rate of 1.3 percent, with total IT spending by Australian businesses to reach Australian dollar 56.4 billion by 2013. The vertical sectors with the highest IT spending growth would be communications (3.2 percent), healthcare (2.6 percent) and utilities (2.3 percent). While IT spending will increase next year, Gartner cautioned IT leaders not to be overly optimistic.

"While the IT industry will return to growth in 2010, the market will not recover to 2008 revenue levels before 2012," said Sondergaard. 2010 is about balancing the focus on cost, risk, and growth. For more than 50 percent of Chief Information Officers the IT budget will be zero percent or less in growth terms. It will only slowly improve in 2011, he added.

Sondergaard said that the three most-searched terms by Gartner clients on gartner.com provide some clues as to the priorities of IT leaders around the world. Cost remained the most-searched term during 2009, although it peaked in May, followed by cloud computing. "Next year will be the year when cloud computing moves from the discovery phase to small pilots, as part of organizations' desire to move from owned to shared IT," he said.

The third most-searched terms on gartner.com were business applications such as enterprise resource planning (ERP) and customer relationship management (CRM). "We believe that 2010 will see increased focus on optimization of business processes linked to software applications, what we call application overhaul. That is what will drive growth in the software segment," Sondergaard said.

Agencies

Tuesday, November 3, 2009

TCS signs multi-million contract with Cardiff City Council

Tata Consultancy Services' contract with Cardiff City Council for technology services is a multi-million dollar deal that will run over 15 years, a company source said on Tuesday.

Under the deal signed last week, Tata Consultancy will provide a host of IT services for faster and efficient delivery of services in Cardiff.

Tata Consultancy and its rivals such as Infosys Technologies and Wipro are aggressively vying for deals in markets such as Europe and Asia Pacific to cut their dependence on the US, which brings in more than half the sector's revenue.

Tata Consultancy, a part of the diversified Tata Group that spans commodities autos and services businesses, last month beat forecasts with a 29 per cent rise in quarterly net profit helped by demand from recession-hit financial customers.

Agencies

Saturday, September 26, 2009

IT services deal signed between GE, Mahindra Satyam

Mahindra Satyam today said it has received an extension of its multi-million dollar contract with GE for next three years January 1, 2010.

GE, which is among the top five customers of Mahindra Satyam for over a decade now, gets support in the specialised areas of Application Development Maintenance, Business Intelligence and engineering services, Satyam Mahindra said in a statement.

"We thank the leadership at GE, for having reposed their confidence in us, and reinforce our resolve to excel in our deliverables to our esteemed partner, for years to come," Mahindra Satyam Global Account Executive Arvind Malhotra said.

GE has signed a similar contract with 11 other vendors. "GE recognizes the support extended over the years by Mahindra Satyam, and their commitment to delivery excellence, even during trying times," GE GDC Leader Steve Morrison said.

Satyam management had been in constant dialogue with its major clients, including GE and others to continue working with it.

"Mahindra Satyam has gained 32 new customers in the last four months," a top official had said earlier.

"Some of the large clients we had lost earlier are coming back and are reassigning new business," Atul Kunwar, the company's president of the Middle East, Europe, India and Asia Pacific regions, said on the sidelines of an industry conference.

The company, currently has about 420 clients, he said, compared with 480 in January before it was left battling for survival after Satyam's founder revealed India's biggest corporate fraud.

Satyam was acquired by Tech Mahindra in an auction in April and subsequently renamed. The number of employees the company has on reserve has come down to 7,000 from 8,500 in July, Kunwar said.

"With the business improving and new deals coming in, we have slowly started taking in employees from the virtual pool."

Agencies

Tuesday, September 22, 2009

Twenty seven lose job every hour in America

Despite the US economy showing indications of recovery, the global job market remains gloomy, with companies laying off at least 27 employees every hour to cut costs.

With companies continuing to reduce their headcount in their efforts to tackle the downturn, around 13,000 jobs have been slashed so far in September by some of the leading global firms most of them headquartered in the US.

Job losses of about 12,900 have been witnessed in just 20 days of this month, translating into an average of 645 people being laid off per day. In turn, the toll comes to at least 27 people losing jobs per hour.

The lay-offs are happening across almost all the sectors from pharma to software to refinery, among others.

Most of the job cuts happened in the United States, which has already seen a staggering 5,50,000 Americans filing for unemployment benefits in the first week of September.

Last week, US Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke said the recession is “very likely over,” while America’s retail sales data strengthened on hopes that recovery from the economic downturn was progressing.

Bernanke, however, said that recovery would be slow and it would take time to create jobs.

September’s job cut wave was led by pharma major Eli Lilly & Company, which will slash around 5,500 jobs globally by 2011.

While in terms of numbers, diversified technology leader Danaher came next with 3,300job cuts followed by agricultural company Monsanto, which would reduce its headcount by 8% of its total workforce or about 1,800 people.

Defence major BAE Systems is also planning to cut 1,116 jobs across plants in the country and may shut down one of its facilities by the end of 2012.

Moreover, US-based computer maker Dell is eliminating 500 people while Deere & Company is reducing its workforce by 367 manufacturing employees.

Other companies which announced job cuts include — Valero Energy, which slashed the jobs of 150 employees and 100 contractors, HJ Heinz’s frozen food arm fires 65 workers in Idaho.

Agencies

Wednesday, September 9, 2009

Highest software budget for 2009-10 comes from APJ firms

Asia Pacific companies plan to increase their software budgets by 4.4 percent on average in 2010, while overall IT budgets was expected to decline by 3.1 percent on average, according to the latest survey by Gartner. More organizations in Asia Pacific (38 percent) expect to increase their software budgets in 2010 than their overall IT budget (31 percent).

"For most organizations, the budgeting process happens once a year, but adjusting the IT budget is a continuous exercise that is driven by economic conditions and changes in the business," said Gartner Research Director Yanna Dharmasthira. "In the midst of economic volatility, hardware budget allocation remains the top priority in most countries, but software budgets are a real bright spot and continue to demonstrate a positive outlook, although more cautious when compared with last year's survey."

The survey showed that the average expected increase in software budget of 4.4 percent in Asia Pacific is higher than all other regions surveyed including Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA), North America and Latin America. India-based respondents are consistently the most optimistic, with the highest number of respondents intending to increase their IT budget in 2010 (42 percent), followed by China (32 percent). On the other hand, Malaysia-based respondents remain pessimistic, with the largest number of respondents intending to decrease their spending (52 percent), followed by Singapore (48 percent of respondents).

The respondents of this survey were asked whether they expected their 2010 IT budget to be below, the same or exceed their IT budget for 2009. Gartner surveyed 323 IT managers in Australia, Singapore, Malaysia, China, India and Hong Kong, as part of a worldwide survey of 982 respondents, to help business and IT managers compare their enterprise IT spending with peer organizations.

Software is expected to represent the second-largest portion of the IT budget in most countries, with the exception of India (where software and hardware spend are roughly equal) and Australia (where spending is notably higher on IT staff). India is the most aggressive with the highest software budget allocation (26.9 percent), followed by Singapore (25.8 percent), Malaysia (24.1 percent) and China (23.1 percent).

India is also the most optimistic in software spending, with the average expected change in software budget of plus 10 percent. Dharmasthira said that vendors should revisit their potential customer list, as they may have shifted in terms of geography, as well as market segments. "Software vendors should not only focus sales efforts on traditional hot spots such as India and China, but look at opportunities in mature markets too. The intentions to increase software budget have become more varied among different countries and organizations, presenting good opportunities in a mix of developed and emerging countries," said Dharmasthira.

Agencies

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