Elite Projects Inc. - Global Collaboration Project Management

Ratna Kumar Chintamaneni

Elite Projects Inc. - Global Collaboration Project Management

* Elite Projects Inc. , USA *
* Elite ProCon Solutions Pvt. Ltd., India *

* HRdex People Solutions * HeliosOS IT ITES Solutions * Ficus Technology Services *

HRdex People Solutions - A Division of Elite ProCon Solutions Pvt. Ltd.

HRdex People Solutions

A Division of Elite ProCon Solutions Pvt. Ltd.

"Jobs, Recruitment, Human Resource & Productivity Studies'

Ficus Technology Services - A Division of Elite ProCon Solutions Pvt. Ltd.

Ficus Technology Services
A Division of Elite ProCon Solutions Pvt. Ltd.
"Truly Connected"

Options, Servicing, Consulting, Hosting and Managing Technology.

HeliosOS IT Solutions -A Division of Elite ProCon Solutions Pvt. Ltd.

HeliosOS IT ITES Solutions
A Division of Elite ProCon Solutions Pvt. Ltd.

IT development, ITES Nerve Center and operation centers for business operations across industry verticals.

July 04, 2007 || Global Delivery Index:

Chinese to Overtake Indians in Offshoring by 2011

An IDC offshoring trend report, based on a new comprehensive set of criteria such as cost of labor, cost of rent and language skills, found that Indian cities are highly ranked while Chinese cities are on the rise and nipping at India’s heels.

IDC said examples of the cities covered in its new Global Delivery Index (GDI), which compares 35 cities in the Asia/Pacific as potential offshore delivery centers, include Adelaide, Bangalore, Dalian, Hanoi and Kuala Lumpur, among many others.

Conrad Chang, IDC research manager, explains there are different risk factors to consider when evaluating outsourcing, offshoring, onshoring and nearshoring. “Some factors are obviously more critical than others and the GDI takes that into consideration,” Chang said. “Often times what differentiates leading cities from the rest is their focus on deal-clinching factors and the GDI weighs that more heavily than other factors.”

According to IDC, Chinese cities will overtake Indian cities by 2011 due to massive investments made in infrastructure, English language, Internet connections and technical skills, which are favorable towards offshoring. IDC said other issues exist, such as confusion about offshoring, onshoring, nearshoring and how to leverage different delivery methods for optimal results.

In addition, is India the only viable option and what are the other alternative global delivery centers and how to objectively compare and quantify risks between different locations, for example, is Bangalore better than Dalian?

United Airlines' Systems Meltdown: Lessons Learned

June 29, 2007

United Airlines' Systems Meltdown: Lessons Learned

By Larry Barrett

The airline's computers shut down for two hours while other carriers were up and running. The result: a multimillion-dollar loss and a hit to United's reputation. It could happen to your company, analysts say, unless you take the proper precautions.

The nightmare scenario that United Airlines and its passengers endured last week when its computer system shut down for two excruciating hours will happen again and again in other industries, analysts say, unless CIOs make significant changes in the way they manage their staffs and their systems.

The Chicago-based airline's June 20 debacle illustrates just how vulnerable a company can be to an innocent mistake—in this case, a United spokeswoman says an employee accidentally disabled the computers while running a routine test on Unimatic, United's flight operations system—and how far-reaching the consequences can be.

More than 260 United flights were delayed for an average of 90 minutes, and nearly 70 other flights were cancelled altogether. The timing couldn't have been worse. The system crashed between 8 a.m. and 10 a.m. Chicago time, right in the heart of the morning rush, leaving arriving United flights to scramble for the few available gates that weren't blocked by delayed United planes that were unable to take off.

"As soon as it happened, the I.T. employee who made the mistake knew what it meant to the system," says Robin Urbanski, a United spokeswoman. "It was just simple human error during a routine test of our flight operation system. It's unfortunate, but we're developing new processes that will prevent future issues like these from impacting our customers."

Making matters worse, according to Urbanski, was the fact that this testing snafu also knocked out Unimatic's backup system. She declined to comment on what new processes would be implemented, or if new software and hardware would be installed.

The Unimatic system, which was originally launched almost 20 years ago, provides pilots with flight plans, gives updates on maintenance information and crew schedules, and records the amount of weight and proper balancing of that weight for all outbound flights. Urbanski says the system has been updated repeatedly in recent years.

All of these applications, including the flight plans, crew scheduling and weight measurements, can still can be done by hand in a pinch—but at a cost.

Michael Boyd, an airline consultant based in Evergreen, Colo., told the Chicago Tribune that United's computer glitch will cost it more than $10 million in lost revenue due to refunds and re-bookings, to say nothing of the hit its reputation took in the process. Worse, while United passengers and planes were stranded at the gates, its competitors were up and running as usual. This wasn't a weather-related incident; it was self-inflicted.

"Of course, organizations could do more to prevent such debacles," says Tom Welsh, senior consultant at Cutter Consortium, an Arlington, Mass.-based I.T. consulting firm. "The live and backup machines should be more rigorously separated, and there should be someone present to make sure these [innocent mistakes] don't happen. Companies strive to maximize profits, but often fallible decision-makers judge the risks wrong."

Analysts say the financial services, retail and transportation industries are particularly vulnerable to the type of systemic paralysis experienced by United last week because they most conform to rigid and unrelenting schedules.

While each company or organization has unique I.T. issues and limitations, analysts say CEOs and CIOs should consider the following advice to avoid the type of disruption United and its customers experienced:

• Get upper management in the organization—including the CEO—to understand how the company's I.T. systems work, what could possibly go wrong, and how that would affect the business. That way, everyone can make informed decisions about I.T. investments and governance.
• Avoid running tests on a live system.
• Make sure it's not possible to confuse the live and backup systems to prevent regular maintenance or testing from affecting the wrong system.
• Improve working conditions for all business-critical technical employees, ensuring reasonable work hours, plenty of rest and the sharing of responsibilities so that no one person is overworked or overly relied upon.
• Conduct a regular and comprehensive analysis of the costs, benefits and risks of all I.T. procedures. This analysis should be performed by qualified technical staff along with business managers.

Despite inconveniencing thousands of passengers, taking a likely eight-figure hit to its bottom line and disrupting service for more than 24 hours, United was fortunate that the computer outage only lasted two hours. Had the problem lingered for another two or three hours, analysts say, the cascading effect would have sent United's operations into a tailspin for as much as a week.

"United now knows that it made an incorrect cost-benefit judgment," says the Cutter Consortium's Welsh. "Now that they're aware, they will probably do the right thing and urgently appoint qualified people to analyze the scenario to make sure it doesn't happen again. These precautions are analogous to seat belts or crash helmets—they save lives but often are left off anyway."

IT: looking forward to a New Year with renewed vigour

The ITeS/BPO sector continue to maintain high growth rate

The year 2006 saw a significant increase in venture capital activities, especially in the IT and BPO segments.

INDIA IS hugely visible on the world map, thanks to the IT professionals. Thanks also to the rapid strides made by the IT and ITeS (IT-enabled Services) sectors in the last decade, the Indian economy has come under intense world attention. This growth has had a spiralling effect on the economy. Given the current trends, the industry is bullish on the future. Yet, the industry senses a change in the landscape and realises the need to adapt to the situation.

The IT and ITeS/BPO (business process outsourcing) sectors have recorded a buoyant growth of over 30 per cent and the trend is expected to continue in the future. The growth was not just confined to large organisations, says a National Association of Software and Service Companies (Nasscom) report. The year that has just ended has indeed seen widespread growth, encompassing both the big and the small players. The IT sector is witnessing some clear trends among the big players. The year 2006 saw a sharp separation between Tier I and Tier II players. While the big six players — TCS, Infosys, Wipro, Cognizant, Satyam and HCL Technologies — grew above the industry average, almost all the Tier II players, such as Patni, iGate, Mastek, Polaris and others, grew below the industry average.

The ITeS/BPO sector continued to maintain a significant growth. There was a shift towards non-voice processes. And, there was a visible movement towards knowledge process outsourcing (KPO) and value-added services.

The year 2006 also saw signs of consolidation in the marketplace. On the IT services side, EDS had acquired MPhasis and Cap Gemini bought over Kanbay. On the BPO front, RR Donnelly annexed Office Tiger.

Venture capital

The year also saw a significant increase in venture capital activities, especially in the IT and BPO segments. According to a study by business intelligence firm Evalueserve, 44 venture capital firms had already raised funds to invest in Indian start-ups, while another 21 were in the process of doing so during 2006-07.

The year that has just gone by saw some frenzied hiring by Tier I players. The top six IT services companies alone reported a net addition of one lakh professionals. With the bulk of the engineering professionals being mopped up by the Tier I players, there was little left for Tier II players who have started visiting Tier III and Tier IV engineering institutions. It was a double whammy for Tier II players as their attrition climbed above 20 per cent in 2006 and their ability to hire from campuses was also challenged. Even for Tier I players, the attrition climbed up in each of the last six quarters.

Shiva Ramani, Chief Executive Officer of SlashSupport, feels that Tier II cities can be tapped with improvement in the infrastructure and telecom connectivity, which should be the next wave.

With the dawn of 2007, the IT and ITeS/BPO industry should be prepared for the challenges and successes. On the brighter side, the industry will see more and more third party Indian IT-BPO companies and MNCs graduate towards sophisticated and complex services such as knowledge process outsourcing, remote infrastructure management, offshore product development and design and engineering services. On the competition front, the country will have to keep a close watch on China, the Philippines, Mexico, Canada and Malaysia.

"The growth for the IT industry in 2007 would largely be driven by three broad phenomena — expanded range of new services, including the BPO and IT infrastructure services; industries beyond financial services such as pharmaceutical, telecommunications, manufacturing, retail, media and entertainment strategically adopting offshoring; and European companies embracing offshoring in a major way," according to R. Chandrasekaran, President and Managing Director, Cognizant.

"Global development centres will also see a marked increase. Indian and MNC companies will leverage development centres outside India in a big way in areas such as China, Malaysia, the Philippines, Eastern Europe and Latin America to service global customers locally and The industry's move towards lower volume and higher value offerings as opposed to entry-level back-office services, will gain momentum during 2007, making for a more evolved and mature IT-BPO environment.

The China factor

The major challenge for India during 2007 is expected to come from China, especially in the IT segment.

Today, nations are competing in the global market and quality cannot be compromised. China has invested heavily in education and want to compete in the global arena. The other major factor is that the Indian government's spending on IT is far lower than the Chinese government.

SHANTHI KANNAN

In Chennai