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Dataquest Domestic Outsourcing Summit 2009 : On-demand, in Demand

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DQI Bureau
New Update

Theres a marked change visible within the Indian market as it has become lot

more mature over the years. The Indian CIOs are becoming far more receptive to

the idea of outsourcing, more than in any other emerging market in the world.

However, for many of them, it is not just a West-like cost reduction in legacy

infrastructure that they are looking at. Many of them want to access new

technology, but in a derisked manner. That has made the on-demand model an

increasingly favorite model among them.

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The two-city Dataquest Domestic Outsourcing Summit 2009: Opportunities &

Challenges in Customer Service & IT Outsourcing, presented by Tata

Communications, tried to look at the various challenges and opportunities that

are associated with the hosted/on-demand model in IT, with special focus on

infrastructure management, CRM, and contact centers. In the first of the two

part series, we present here the major points that emanated from the discussion

organized on June 5, 2009 at the Hyatt Regency, New Delhi.

The forum, one of the rare platforms that dealt on the subject so thoroughly,

saw participation from about twenty stakeholders including fifteen heads of

technologies/CIOs.

The forum provided

CIOs with a platform to discuss opportunities and challenges in the

on-demand model
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The discussion was preceded by presentation from all Tata Communications

represetatives.

With the boom in Indian economy, domestic businesses have been growing in

size as well as geographical spread. This has given rise to the need for various

outsourced services in order to get an optimized business process solution and

client servicing. Theres huge transformation that has happened in the domestic

market as its growing rapidly, and two key growth drivers are the Telecom and

BFSI verticals; its basically the services vertical that is driving the

outsourcing business, said Yazad Boga, head hosted contact center services,

Global Enterprise Solutions, Tata Communications, Although costing will remain

a challenge for the players offering hosted solutions in the domestic market,

yet the growing maturity of Indian businesses have now started to understand the

advantage of hosted services and the demand for such service is going to

leapfrog in the near future, he added.

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As the service providers today are offering various pay-as-you-use model with

scalability options, the Indian CIOs can start evaluating the benefits

associated with on-demand model, especially in a challenging economic scenario

since it definitely helps businesses to save plenty of cost. For any new IT

investment the CIOs can either look for managed hosting services, or for any

additional requirement they can seek individual component hosting options from

the service providers that are available today as well, said Simon Robin of

Tata Communications.

(1) & (2)

Panelists engrossed in some serious discussion about the challenges and

opportunities in the on-demand model

One of the key reasons behind the transformation is of course the success of

the concept of software as a service (SaaS) model. The customers are not only

using it as a platform for ready services but also looking to use this as a

platform to build their own services and offer them to their clients. The

customers now have become more articulate about cost effectiveness rather than

costing, and they are now willing to outsource their business and looking for an

end-to-end solution. One of the key reasons is the maturity that has come into

managed services and solutions offered by various service providers; its not

just limited to managing the contact center, but the capability has now been

built to provide advance services like managing the bandwidth (managed MPLS) as

well, observed Sunil Gujral, executive vice president, Quatrro BPO.

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Yazad Boga, head,

hosted contact centers, Tata Communications making a point
Simon Robin, head,

managed infrastructure, Tata Communications illustrating the case for

outsourcing infrastructure

As domestic businesses are growing and spreading out to multiple locations,

need for hosted contact centers is growing. It is important therefore, for the

service providers to offer seamless and effective solutions to their customers

that are both cost effective as well as flexible. Our customers are outsourcing

their business processes and in turn we are outsourcing our processes to a

third-party in order to deliver seamless services to our customers. Therefore,

we need to get a full-proof solution in order to offer our customers the same.

Since hosting allows contact centers like us to access technology without the

need to build or purchase the required infrastructure, the hosted model works

well as it means plenty of cost saving and flexibility too. Therefore, more and

more companies are now looking for hosted contact centers, explained SV Ramana

, CTO, Genpact.

KB

Singh, CIO, BSES
SV

Ramana, CTO, Genpact


Atul Kumar, AGM, IT, Syndicate Bank


Umesh Vashishtha, CIO, Unitech
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PV

Ramdas, VP, Technology, HCL BPO


Rajesh Munjal, CIO, Carzonrent
S

Gopalakrishnan, VP, Technology, IBM Daksh


Sunil Gujral, CIO and EVP, Quatrro



Navtej Matharu, CIO, Serco India


Prakash Pradhan, head, IT, Jagsonpal Pharmaceuticals
Col

Ramesh Wahi, CIO, House of Pearl


Balaka Baruah Aggarwal, manager, Springboard Research



Vishwajeet Singh, National manager, IT,



Fcm travel Solutions


Indraneel Fuke, head hosted CRM, Tata Communications


Amit Gupta, VP, IT Services, Fidelity Business Services


Shyamanuja Das, editor, Dataquest (moderator)
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Explaining further the need for a wholesome and flexible hosted solution

Gopalakrishnan S, VP-technology, IBM Daksh said, Customers in the domestic

market are today very clear of their requirements and what they want to

outsource. The service providers therefore, have to come out with more effective

and flexible solutions based on the on-demand model to cater to the diverse

needs of the domestic market, which is evolving and growing at a very rapid

pace.

Most CIOs agreed that going forward, the on-demand model that provides a

convenient way to scale up IT would pick up rapidly.

Piyali Guha



piyalig@cybermedia.co.in

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