Editor's Blog

No Facebook page? Not necessarily a #fail.
Monday, March 08, 2010

Back in late January, an entry on the NASSCOM India Leadership Forum blog caused a bit of a brouhaha. In it, Vishal Gondal, CEO of mobile games company Indiagames, accused Indian IT companies of failing to adapt to the world of social networking.

“This is surely one ‘social’ cause [that] the Indian IT leaders should wake up to,” he wrote.

His posting attracted a stream of comments - some rather less measured, and more caustic, than others. On the whole, however, those who left comments appeared to agree with Vishal Gondal: there is still much work for such companies to do if they’re really going to reap the benefits of Web 2.0.

I broadly agree, but with certain caveats. First, I think it’s true of outsourcing companies everywhere in the world, not just India. Second, I think we need to recognise that the measures that Mr Gondal suggests for social networking success - a Facebook page, a Twitter account - don’t necessarily translate well to the world of IT services and outsourcing.

It’s a subject I thought I’d discuss with Raj Datta, chief knowledge officer at Indian IT and R&D services company MindTree. I first met Raj in London about three years ago and think he’s a great person to speak to about social networking. That’s because Raj’s work at MindTree is driven by the belief that humans are “wired to share” and because social networking takes centre stage in helping Mindtree’s workforce to share ideas and knowledge. In fact, the company has been using social software since 2003 and its overall philosophy has been “socio-technical” from the very beginning.

“I remember in 2006, I was chairing a panel at a conference in India, which featured Jimmy Wales of Wikipedia,” Raj recalls. “Following his presentation, I asked the audience a simple question: ‘Who here is working with wikis in the enterprise?’ Only about 5% of hands went up,” he says.

If he performed the same ad-hoc poll today, the story would be different, he believes. “The last two to three years has seen a tremendous hype around social software, social networks, Web 2.0 and Enterprise 2.0 as buzzwords, which has demanded attention from various departments.”

But have Indian companies been able to transform Web 2.0 hype into action, I wonder?

“Most Indian IT companies today are dabbling it. However, they are early in their discovery process and are grappling with typical issues, ranging from technology, to policy, to process,” Datta says. In general, he believes, companies are not easily making the shift to a more open, social, collaborative environment - but there is no way to avoid social software as it is fast becoming part of the “natural habitat” for many people who want to share ideas, whether they’re at home or at work.

Perhaps it’s just not realistic to judge a company’s enthusiasm for social networking by whether they’re experimenting with it publicly?

At MindTree, for example, internal corporate communications have provided an ideal platform for early experimentations with social networking. Instead of a one-way, ‘top-down’ approach - where the CEO or other top executive addresses the workforce in the same way that a general might dictate a battle plan to the troops - Web 2.0 creates conversations where communications can flow in multiple directions.

The systems and tools that Raj and his team have built have social features that also allow ‘bottom-up’ and ‘lateral’ communications, too, he says. “For example, our Neuron idea management system allows for ideas to percolate upwards in the organisation to the senior-most people, and in parallel, allow for peer-to-peer lateral communications where people can comment on an idea, rate it, build links between ideas and so on,” he says. But top-down communication still take place, because senior executives use the system to issue requests for ideas along a particular theme or to solve a specific challenge, he says. Now that’s really tapping into ‘the wisdom of the crowd’.

Social networking is also key to how MindTree communicates with its clients about the progress of projects. The company’s collaborative ProjectSpace portal allows for effective collaboration between project teams, clients and subject-matter experts so that they can track issues, build project-specific knowledge bases in wiki formats, and establish discussion forums for questions and clarifications. 

Raj tells me that he and his team are now working on a next-generation system that will allow MindTree to tap into social networks outside of the company - but in a “planned and seamless” manner, of course.

So it seems to me that there’s probably a lot going on behind the scenes at outsourcing companies. Just because a provider doesn’t have a Facebook page or a Twitter account, that doesn’t mean it’s not interested in social networking or failing to explore Web 2.0 it in some part of their business.

IT companies - whether they’re in India or anywhere else in the world - are by their nature focussed on business-to-business (B2B) communications, not business-to-consumer (B2C). In other words, they’re not trying to sell a new chocolate bar, washing detergent or hatchback car to the general public.

For them, the true value of social networking lies in finding better ways to tackle client challenges and track project progress. These are the things that set them apart from their competitors. So internal social networking initiatives are the best way for outsourcing providers to experiment with new tools and approaches, long before they dip their toes into the dangerous waters of public forums. 

(0)comments

• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 

Cash windfalls for disgruntled IT services customers few and far between
Thursday, February 25, 2010

If you’ve got a question about outsourcing contract law, Mike Henley at PA Consulting is a good person to ask. Before joining PA’s sourcing practice seven months ago, he was a partner at commercial law firm Hammonds for over 20 years, most recently heading up its IT practice.

So when I got the chance to speak to Mike recently, I was interested to get his perspective on the recent BSkyB/EDS case, in which PA Consulting acted as an expert witness.

To quickly recap on this case, the court found that during the sales process, EDS “fraudulently misrepresented” the time it would take to design and build a customer relationship management (CRM) system for BSkyB. While EDS’s new parent company Hewlett-Packard intends to appeal, it has been ordered to pay BSkyB £200 million in interim damages. In total, BSkyB is claiming £700 million in damages from EDS. The original contract value? Around £48 million.

So what does this case say about how the law treats breach-of-contract in IT cases? In Mike’s opinion, the case creates nothing new in the way of legal precedent. While EDS built a clear liability cap of £30 million into the contract, this was deemed to be invalid, because EDS lied to get the contract.

Nor does he believe it will lead to more disgruntled customers of IT suppliers seeking legal redress, inspired by BSkyB’s claim for a sum twenty times greater than the original contract value. “Litigation was the answer for BSkyB in this case, but it won’t be the answer for many companies,” he says.

For a start, cases like these are lengthy, expensive and time-consuming to pursue. EDS pitched to BSkyB back in 2000. The CRM project was scheduled to finish in 2002. BSkyB sued EDS in 2004 and finally completed the project in-house in 2006. The trial began in 2007 and it took the judge a further 18 months to reach his judgement.

So is there anything that IT suppliers and their clients can learn from the case? The old rule - caveat emptor, or ‘let the buyer beware’ - still applies, Mike says.

“What we’re saying to our clients is that it’s a false economy to embark on one of these projects just because they really want to get started, without being totally sure what they want and communicating that clearly to the supplier,” he says. “If the specification isn’t stable, then sure as night follows day, the supplier will respond to their requests by telling them it’s not in the spec.”

That said, the ruling could drive large suppliers working on large deals to scrutinise more closely the governance they have in place around the sales process. At the same time, customers should be committed to performing more “hard-headed due diligence” when considering the pitches of prospective suppliers.

But what about the complaints, frequently raised by large IT suppliers and outsourcing companies, about the huge costs they devote to pitching for deals, many of which they won’t end up winning? Do these costs create an environment where there’s a temptation to cut corners or make careless promises?

“You’re right - it’s a very common refrain. I have some sympathy for suppliers in that respect, because procurement processes can be lengthy, labyrinthine and absorb a lot of resources, so the cost of making a sale can be very high,” he says. “But I don’t think for a minute that means that many suppliers are cutting corners to the extent of fraud.”

(0)comments

• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 

Don’t pass the buck for IT security
Wednesday, February 17, 2010

It’s no secret that today’s cybercriminals are far more sophisticated than they were just a few years ago.

Instead of labouring away in loose affiliates of code-obsessed hackers, they’re key lynchpins in well-funded, highly organised crime gangs. They want to get their hands on your organsation’s customer data, not just deface its website. And their motivation? Well, it’s not just prestige and notoriety within the hacking fraternity that they’re after; it’s good, old-fashioned financial gain.

The name that Albert Gonzalez gave to his plan to steal data from the computers of major US retailers says it all: Operation Get Rich or Die Tryin’.

By the time the law finally caught up with Gonzalez, he and his co-conspirators had netted the details of some 170 million individual credit cards, lifting them off systems owned by a host of brand names well-known to US shoppers, including TJ Maxx, Barnes and Noble and OfficeMax.

So I was interested to see predictions from respected IT market research company Forrester Research last week that 2010 could be the year for IT security outsourcing.

But as the report, entitled Twelve Recommendations for your 2010 Information Security Strategy, points out, IT security is an area that few companies will be comfortable to outsource in its entirety. Instead, say Forrester analysts, they’ll be looking for a ‘co-sourcing’ approach.

There are clear reasons for that. “Some companies employ outsourcing vendors because they want to wipe their hands clean of regulatory compliance or hand over a messy environment in the hopes that the outsourcer will be able to fix it,” the report observes. “Those are obviously the wrong reasons to outsource.”

“First, even if you outsource security, you’re still accountable for the protection of that data,” it continues. “Second, if you have a messy environment, the outsourcer does not have any incentive to fix it—and the nightmare of managing that environment will be worse if a third party gets involved.”

And, when it comes to IT security, the price of failure is often too high a cost to pay. If my credit card details are stolen from a retailer’s servers, I’m going to blame the retailer, not its outsourcing partner. The brand damage will be theirs, whomsoever they choose to point the finger at. Organisations can’t pass the buck for IT security. Understanding and addressing any existing security issues is surely a pre-requisite for outsourcing IT. 

(0)comments

• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 

Is LATAM the place to be in 2010?
Monday, February 01, 2010

Hello and a belated Happy New Year. After a brief break from blogging, I’m back and ready to start posting again. So if there are stories, issues or trends you’d like to see covered here, please don’t hesitate to me.

One area I’ll be keeping a close eye on in 2010 is Latin America and the Caribbean. For a start, it’s a region that’s already benefiting from the willingness of US corporations to “nearshore” back-office operations.

And let’s not forget it’s census year in the US. According to a recent article in The Economist, America’s Hispanic population is this year expected to come in at almost 16% of the total, having overtaken the black population, likely to be put at around 2.5 percentage points less.

Spanish is already the second most-common language in the US and, according to 2007 figures from the US Census Bureau, Spanish is the primary language spoken at home by over 34 million Americans aged five or over. Increasingly, this audience has considerable consumer clout.

For many US companies, these demographic trends - along with the continued need for cost reduction - boost the attractions of Latin American business process outsourcing, and in particular, call centre operations.

There’s also been a flurry of mergers and acquisitions in the region, as this article from research company Zagada’s Nearshore Journal site outlines.

Last year’s bumper $6.4 billion acquisition of ACS by Xerox, for example, was preceded by ACS’s own takeovers of Argentina-based Grupo Multivoice in 2008 and e-Services group in Jamaica in 2009. These deals were not inconsequential buy-ups of tiny ‘boutique’ players, either: Multivoice had $40 million in revenue and 6,000 workers. The deal value was undisclosed. In the case of e-Services, the company had $65 million in annual revenues, 4,000 workers and was acquired for $85 million.

Three companies - Bancolombia’s Multienlace BPO subsidiary, Actionline Codoba of Argentina and a small Peruvian contact centre - all snapped up by a US-based private equity firm, Eton Park Capital Management.

Other notable targets in the region include Star Contact (Panama), bought by US-based NCO Group; Teledatos (Columbia), bought by French BPO company Teleperformance; and National Asset Recovery Services’ (NARS) centres in Panama and Jamaica, which were purchased by HIG Capital, another US-based private equity firm.

Meanwhile, homegrown Softtek of Mexico has expanded into other countries in the region in recent years, including Argentina and Paraguay, as well as elsewhere in the world. For example, in July 2009, the company opened a new global delivery centre in Wuxi, China.

As analyst Peter Ryan of Datamonitor recently commented. “Latin America will equally benefit from possible delivery engagements with companies based in Spain, Portugal and other parts of Western Europe that are interested in taking advantage of price point arbitrage, a large labor pool and ever-increasing language skills among university graduates.”

He adds that the increase in interest among Indian-based services organizations for possible roll-outs in Latin America has been strong over the past few years and is likely to grow as Indian labour becomes more expensive. 

All of this points to a fast-growing and exciting market in 2010. 

(0)comments

• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 

Outsourcing in Islamic finance
Monday, November 16, 2009

Is Malaysia set to become the global centre of a new breed of Islamic finance outsourcing services? Recent research from ValueNotes, a Pune, India-based research firm suggests that this is the case.

Otherwise known as Shari’ah banking, Islamic finance is a system of banking consistent with the principles of Islamic law (or Sharia), which prohibit the payment or acceptance of interest fees for the lending and accepting of money, as well as investing in businesses that provide goods or services contrary to Islamic principles.

In its recent research, ValueNotes points out that the rapid growth of Islamic finance in the past 30 years has sent global banking giants, such as HSBC and Standard Chartered, scrambling to develop their own offerings for Muslim clients. The result is that Islamic finance is now offered in more than 75 countries worldwide. Total assets invested in this way, meanwhile, totalled between $750 billion and $800 billion in July 2009, according to a study conducted by the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco. By 2010, they should reach a staggering $1 trillion.

ValueNotes analysts think Malaysia is well-positioned to tap into the outsourcing needs of banks that offer Islamic finance services. Along with Iran and Saudi Arabia, Malaysia is one of the leading players in Islamic finance. The country currently has 17 registered Islamic banks, so there are plenty of people there with skills and experience to offer.

There are other positive signs, too. Maveric Systems, a software testing service provider, recently launched its own Malaysian operations in order to offer services in the Islamic finance domain. Along with setting up a center in Malaysia, the company has also partnered with Malaysia University of Science and Technology (MUST) to roll out courses and training modules in line with Islamic finance and software testing.

Overall, the Malaysian outsourcing industry has been growing 15% annually and will reach $1.1 billion for 2009, growing to $1.9 billion by 2013. Apart from a few small research companies offering services such as data collection and data processing to Islamic banks, Islamic finance is one of the niche segments in Malaysia that, as yet, remains untapped, say ValueNotes’ researchers.

(0)comments

• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 

Capgemini’s BIM ambitions
Friday, October 30, 2009

Yesterday, Capgemini announced that it is to make a “major investment” in its Business Information Management (BIM) service line, including the hiring of an additional 3,000 consultants and the creation of a Centre of Excellence in India, staffed with 1,000 specialists.

I was interested to find out more and was able to track down Paul Nannetti, the newly announced general manager of Capgemini’s global BIM service line, just as he was about to board a plane.

I started out by asking him a little bit about the BIM service line and his new role. He explained that this is the area of Capgemini that assists clients in managing their information lifecycle - the capture, cleansing, analysis and presentation of data, both structured and unstructured, so that business can measure their performance against internal goals and to decide on new strategies. In other words, it’s a set of services that tend to fall under the umbrella term ‘Business Intelligence’.

While this is a new role for Nannetti, he’s been at Capgemini for 15 years. Most recently, he has spent two years working at group level on the company’s industrialisation strategy - the way it turns experiences from individual projects into a recognisable ‘product’ that can be offered to other clients - and on introducing remote offshore delivery centres in India. Prior to that, he was head of consulting in continental Europe for two years. He’s also ran the company’s Nordic business, its global life sciences practice and its European CRM practice.

So why has Capgemini decided to increase its focus on and investment in BIM right now? “This is a very hot area right now,” he told me. “Our technology partners are investing heavily to develop new solutions in this area. Our clients have many challenges in this space, but see many opportunities in conquering them, too.”

Nannetti gave me four reasons why companies might hand their BIM processes to Capgemini:

1. They want to tap into the expertise of consultants who have delivered BI in a range of different companies and industries. “These consultants know what works and what doesn’t,” he said.
2. They require help in navigating the complex and crowded market for BI tools. “We have strong relationships with all the major suppliers in this areas and many of the less major ones - but we bring an objective, technology-agnostic perspective to the decision.
3. They need someone to help with the “translation work” between business people and IT people - so that the information requirements of the business are fully met by the systems and technologies at its disposal.
4. They want to take advantage of the cost efficiencies available by offshoring some of the work involved in BIM.

But is business intelligence work a suitable candidate for outsourcing, I asked. After all, most companies still prefer to outsource tasks that they believe are not core differentiators for them - what could be more core than managing performance and identifying new opportunities?

Nannetti explained that, in many cases, companies will look to Capgemini to take over a significant portion of the IT work; the development, implementation and running of systems; and the production of reports. “But the design of reports and the interpretation of the information they contain certainly needs to be in the hands of business analysis specialists and these will often be in-house personnel,” he said.

The India-based Centre of Excellence won’t be a single location. It will primarily be based in Mumbai, but work for financial services companies will be carried out in Pune. Staff in these locations will also be supported by staff in Chennai, Hyderabad and Bangalore. 

(0)comments

• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 

Outsourcing hopefuls still face massive digital divide
Tuesday, October 27, 2009

Lack of broadband Internet access is depriving many developing countries of the chance to build up economy-boosting outsourcing sectors, according to the 2009 Information Economy report launched last week by UNCTAD - the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development.

The report presents a fascinating - if somewhat depressing - view of the worldwide digital divide. For example, companies and consumers in developed countries are 200 times more likely to have access to broadband in developed countries than in the poorest Least Developed Countries (LDCs). And the cost of broadband access varies widely - but if you’re in Burkina Faso, the Central African Republic or Swaziland, expect to pay upwards of $1,300 per month.

“The narrowing of the digital divide remains a key development challenge,” UNCTAD Deputy Secretary-General Petko Draganov said at the launch of the report. “What is known as the broadband gap for example is becoming a serious handicap for companies in many poor countries.”

On a positive note, however, it’s clear that the situation is due to change soon in many African countries. I recently came across research from market analyst company Pyramid Research that discusses how twelve new undersea cables planned for launch between the third quarter of 2009 and mid-2011 will do much to address Africa’s great unmet demand for broadband services.

By tying many African states into the the submarine backbone that carries 95% of today’s voice and internet traffic, these cables will remove the continent’s heavy reliance on expensive satellite links and boost total broadband adoption in Africa by a compound annual growth rate of 28% from 2009 to 2013. By 2011, Pyramid Research analyst Dearbhla McHenry estimates that the number of African states without broadband access will fall from 19 to one.

(0)comments

• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 

No blockbuster in sight
Tuesday, October 20, 2009

When Indian outsourcing company HCL beat rival Infosys in the race to buy UK-based Axon for some £440 million last year, some commentators hailed the deal as the first of many “outbound” acquisitions of European and US IT services companies by their larger Indian counterparts.

So far, that’s not happened. Recently, all the big M&A news in outsourcing sector seems to come from the US: Xerox buys ACS, Dell buys Perot.

Yesterday, Reuters India published a very interesting article, ‘Indian outsourcers shy of blockbuster M&A’, that suggests that this situation won’t change any time soon. As the authors point out, India’s near-$60 billion IT sector seems determined to focus on acquiring smaller niche companies, both at home and abroad, in order to tap into vertical industry opportunities in sectors such as utilities and healthcare.

As an alternative, they may opt to buy the local back-office operations of large foreign companies - just as Cognizant Technology did last week when it snapped up the Indian back-office unit of UBS for some $75 million.

So there’s little chance of a big European firm like Atos Origin or Capgemini coming under Indian ownership in the near future. Infosys, which abandoned the Axon deal last year, has some $2.8 billion in cash - but CEO Kris Gopalakrishnan told Reuters that he’s only looking to spend around 10% of annual revenues (around $400 million) on its next acquisition.

There are a number of very good reasons for Mr Gopalkrishnan and other CEOs who may be shopping around to hold back on their purchases - the major one being, of course, the current economic climate. But there are also the huge risks involved in integrating a large European headcount with an existing base of relatively low-cost staff to be considered. Differing business models and cultures will not sit together well without some considerable upheaval.

That said, Indian companies are eager to increase the value of the contracts they can offer companies in Europe and the US and to develop the kinds of high-level, consultative partnerships that the likes of Accenture and IBM enjoy with huge, multinational companies. In order to do so, they’ll need to expand rapidly into new territories and also be able to attract (and retain) senior executives with experience in leading top-level strategic relationships. With that in mind, it will be extremely interesting to see how cash-rich Indian buyers proceed.

(0)comments

• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 

Cloud computing exposing low cost of IT resources
Monday, October 05, 2009

Recently, I’ve been blogging about the differences (and similarities) between cloud computing and traditional outsourcing. This generated some thought-provoking comments from Kate Craig-Wood, the managing director of IT hosting company Memset.

Cutting straight to the chase, Craig-Wood believes there are only three real differences - at least between cloud computing and IT infrastructure outsourcing. They are:

1) Shorter contracts: Hours, days or weeks ("at most, one month"), rather than months or years ("usually at least six months for traditional outsourcing").
2) On-demand capabilities: near-instant scaling up and down of available resources.
3) No up-front costs: Capital expenditure (cap ex) and installation fees, she explains, are absorbed into the rental charges. In effect that transforms the cap ex usually associated with IT infrastructure into operational expenditure (op ex).

“Modern ‘managed hosting’ providers like my company are largely synonymous with ‘cloud computing’ or ‘utility Computing’ providers,” Craig-Wood argues. After all, she continues, a company such as Memset can provide a customer with anything from a single virtual machine to a large dedicated cluster, with a contract of one month and no set-up fees.

“We are blurring the line between traditional IT infrastructure outsourcing (for example, HP/EDS at the high end and Rackspace at the low end) and ‘pure’ cloud providers, such as Amazon EC2.”

The impact for IT outsourcing providers is clear, she believes: cloud computing is exposing the true costs of computer resources - which, thanks to Moore’s Law, are “really, really cheap”.

According to Craig-Wood, “Cloud/utility providers are driving the commoditisation of compute and storage resources, thus eviscarating the outrageous profit margins enjoyed by the old guard of IT outsourcing providers.”

It’s a controversial viewpoint - and I have to admit that I’m still mulling it over. I guess it all depends on what services are provided around these resources, the level at which they are delivered, as well as the level of assurance required by many corporate customers. Kate claims that cloud computing “threatens the livelihoods of the big IT firms who have become better at selling peoples’ time than actual IT services”; I, on the other hand, wonder if peoples’ time is something many companies are still happy to pay for - if it frees up time for their own employees, or indeed, enables them to run a leaner workforce? What do you think?

(0)comments

• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 

Mauritius: A plan for outsourcing success?
Wednesday, September 23, 2009

In his personal travelogue, Following the Equator, Mark Twain made the following observation about the tiny nation of Mauritius: “You gather the idea that Mauritius was made first, and then heaven, and that heaven was copied after Mauritius.”

Maybe so, but how does this island paradise stack up against other countries in attracting outsourcing business to its shores? The answer seems to be, pretty well. It currently ranks 25th on AT Kearney’s Global Services Location Index (GSLI). And a KPMG report earlier this year outlined some of the generous financial incentives offered by the government of Mauritius to encourage foreign IT/BPO companies to the country. These include corporate tax exemption (either 0% in the first year and 15% thereafter, or 5% in perpetuity); zero customs duty on ICT equipment; fifty per cent tax relief on personal income tax for foreign IT specialists; and refunds of up to 75 per cent of training costs.

Last week, I exchanged emails with the Honourable Mohammed Asraf Ally Dulull, the Mauritian Minister of Information and Communication Technology, to find out a little more about how the government in Mauritius is working to promote the country as an outsourcing/offshoring destination.

Q. How developed is the outsourcing industry in Mauritius at this point and what targets have been set?
A. Mauritius welcomed its first outsourcing operator, a call centre, in 1995. Fourteen years later, there are over 260 companies operating in this field, employing around 11,000 people. It is interesting to note that only four to five years ago, the number of people employed was just 3,500. There has been a significant increase in the level of employment in the outsourcing industry. At present, this contributes 4% of GDP (excluding telecommunications). The ICT and IT-Enabled industry is expected to employ 25, 000 people in 2013, contributing to around 12% of GDP, at par with the financial services sector.

Q. And what international companies are already being served by Mauritius-based outsourcers?
A. Service providers in Mauritius are successfully delivering a wide-array of services to offshore clients, which include Fortune 100 and Fortune 500 companies from the financial services sector, as well as airlines, hotel chains and telecom companies. The BPO landscape is characterised by some global suppliers that include Accenture, Ceridian, Intelenet, Infosys, and offshore captives such as Deutsche Bank, DHL, Huawei, Orange Business Services and TNT Document Services, among others. 

Q. What challenges do you face - economically, politically, culturally?
A. The main challenge faced by Mauritius is in terms of its limited size and people.  The Mauritian population consists of 1.2 million people. However, the limited labour is highly qualified and skilled. The government has also been encouraging more training initiatives and specific incentives are also given to companies to engage in training programs to keep pace with technology and also with market demand. Furthermore, a project to set up an ICT Academy in Mauritius is also in the pipeline, which would make available a larger number of qualified people to better serve the global outsourcing market.

Q. And what other actions is the government taking to ensure Mauritius can offer a favourable environment for outsourcing?
A. The government has brought in considerable reforms in order to open up the economy to foreigners.  This includes improved regulatory framework for the obtention of work permits and occupation permits and establishment of foreign legal firms in Mauritius, amongst others.  For instance, to facilitate the technological transfer for expert coming from other part of the world, the government has put a fast-track system for work permit for qualified IT personnel. All this will also help in the transfer of knowledge and skills.

In a few weeks’ time, Mr Dulull will be opening the Mauritius International Outsourcing Forum in the country’s capital city, Port Louis. While I was kindly invited to attend, family commitments have forced me to decline, but I hope very much to have another opportunity to visit in future.

(0)comments

• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
•