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Bangalore: In a move that could bring a smile to many faces, Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) has announced that it will hire 25,000 people globally in 2009, with 90 percent of them in India alone. Though the number is bigger when compared to the hiring these days, it is less than last year when TCS appointed around 35,000 people.

With this recruitment drive, TCS also plans to expand its presence into the tier-II cities in India. “We will be hiring 25,000 people this year, which means roughly 25 lakh square feet of work space required and, therefore, we need to grow outside the metros. Tier-II cities are our only focus for expansion in the country as the top rung are clogged and saturated,” said Tanmoy Chakrabarty, Vice-President and Head of Government Industry Solutions unit at TCS.

Following this hiring spree, the total global manpower of TCS would go up to more than 1.8 lakh. This will put the IT services provider among large private Indian employers like Tata Steel, which has the total employee strength of two lakh. Going forward, the company, which has an estimated 32 percent market share, plans to cash in on the Indian government’s plan to invest Rs. 40,000 crore on IT services.

Currently, 70 percent of the IT segment’s revenue is from India, while the rest comes from the U.S., Latin America, Africa and South East Asian countries. However, the revenue contribution from Indian government businesses to the total company revenue of $6 billion is less than five percent, which the company intends to increase to more than 10 percent in the next three years.

S.Mahalingam executive director and CFO of TCS said the company is seeing the first signs of a revival of the global economy. He, however, declined to say whether this was the end of the global recession.

Like the most IT companies, TCS has also been severely hit by the global recession. It has experienced a number of project cancellations since September 2008. “As the recession spread across the globe and sunk deeper, a number of customers were canceling their projects with us but lately we see an arrest in this,” said Mahalingam.

But customers remain cautious and are showing discretion in their spending, he said.

Mahalingam said TCS followed a policy of diversification in revenues that has helped in these rough times. Besides the company has also followed the same policy in terms of geography and has been focusing on emerging markets like the BRIC countries for growth.

“India has been a strong market for us besides the other BRIC countries and that has payed off,” said Mahalingam.

On the employee front, he said even though there is a freeze on hiring fresh staff, the company has honored the offer made to 24,500 people earlier.

TCS has seen a strong growth in retail, pharma, utilities verticals over the last few months.

Bangalore: The ongoing migration of Indian citizens from paper cards to smart cards is throwing up a multibillion dollar business opportunity for domestic technology players.

The citizen ID card program proposed by the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) will be supported by a vast eco-system, comprising data collectors or managers, delivery channels, chip designers, smart card manufacturers, application and software providers, system integrators, networking analysts and print companies. The entire ID card project in India is estimated to be around Rs. 10,000 crore, with the first phase covering ultra-urban, urban, and semi-urban population offering Rs. 6,500 crore business opportunities.

IT companies like TCS and Infosys have confirmed that they would actively bid for the project. “The entire process including the bidding process, deal negotiations and business evaluation, are expected to be transparent. There will not be any conflict of interest for us and therefore, we will participate in the bid,” said a Senior Official at Infosys Technologies.

TCS has already been working with the government on projects like e-passport, Gujarat police and the Defence Ministry. “Since it is going to be an open bidding process, we will be bidding for it,” said a Senior Official at TCS.

Around 27 large e-governance projects worth Rs. 40,000 crore are currently in the pipeline. Having been badly hit by the economic recession, many technology leaders have been urging the government to accelerate these projects to induce economic buoyancy. The UIDAI comes as a quick response to the industry’s call.

Som Mittal, the President of IT industry body Nasscom, told Times of India, “This is a transformational project for the country as it will overlay many underlying projects, creating huge efficiencies for the country leading to enhanced governance and reduced costs.”

The global shipment of smart card surpassed an estimated five billion units in 2008 and this figure is projected to surge at CAGR of nearly 11 percent through 2012, according to “Smart Card Market Forecast to 2012″, a recent market research report.

S. Ramadorai, CEO of TCS, said there will be no pay hike in 2009, and the company plans to increase its working hours from 40 hours to 45 hours per week from April 2009.

The company will treat internal efficiency as a critical measure to benefit from higher employee productivity. There will be no change in behavior because of any US tax break, but there will be an emphasis on reduction of discretionary spend and delay infrastructure spending, said a company statement.

Software major TCS and networking major Cisco have allied to design and develop applications relating to virtual data centers, offering customers network as a platform service.

Under the agreement, TCS will build a new technology practice focused on Cisco’s data centre networking and security solutions .

The companies also announced the formation of a Cisco Technology Lab at the TCS campus in Chennai, India.  John Chambers, chairman and CEO for Cisco, and S. Ramadorai, chief executive officer and managing director for TCS made the announcements at a press conference today.

The Lab will allow TCS to develop network-based data centre solutions, test frameworks, develop skills and certify employees in Cisco data centre technologies.  The lab will also allow Cisco and TCS to illustrate proof-of-concepts and IT and networking methodologies for client-specific business processes.  As part of the new practice, TCS will incorporate Cisco’s Data Centre 3.0 technologies, with TCS’ IT services, business solutions and outsourcing. The practice will focus on helping customers develop next-generation virtualized datacenters and achieve greater operational and energy efficiency.  The companies will also explore new networking innovations to address the needs of large and small businesses for IT services.

“Customers are demanding greater dynamism from their IT infrastructure and application environment to address current challenges and to capitalize on opportunities whenever and wherever they emerge,” said N Chandrasekaran, chief operating officer and executive director of TCS.  “This strategic alliance will take advantage of Cisco’s data centre networking solutions and TCS’ global network delivery model to help our customers increase the efficiency and agility of their IT operations.”

The alliance will initially focus on India as well as mutual enterprise customers in the United States and the United Kingdom in the key verticals of banking and finance services, telecom, and government as well as small and medium-sized business.

The two companies are developing go-to-market solutions that meet the infrastructure and network requirements of global corporations. Both companies will invest in skills development and training labs to provide an end-to-end solution to meet customer requirements.

Days after the biggest scandal to rock the Indian IT sector, everyone is now waiting to see what the other major IT players will make of this situation.

Surjeet Singh, CFO and chief of operations of Patni Computers has termed this event an isolated incident and an aberration . He also revealed that the company is in talks with key Satyam customers to enable business continuity with them. Singh said, While this case is bound to shake investor and customer confidence, I do not believe that it will taint the industry s illustrious past.

Others, such as TCS and Wipro have kept all Satyam accounts/business on hold terming it as uncertain situation.

Rumors of a possible merger/takeover have also gathered steam since the shocking revelations. However, probable suitors like TCS, Wipro, and Mindtree are keeping mum for the time being.

CXOtoday contacted Satyam in a bid to clarify this issue. A company spokesperson said no meaningful discussions have taken place at the board level regarding this issue. He said the board meeting scheduled this Saturday would shed some light on where the recent events leave Satyam in the short term.

Beijing November 17, 2008 — Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), (BSE: TCS.BO, NSE: TCS.NS) a leading IT services, business solutions and outsourcing organization, today announced the inauguration of its latest Global Delivery Center in Tianjin. The 300 seat delivery center at Tianjin is TCS China’s fourth global delivery center in China after Beijing, Shanghai and Hangzhou.

The Tianjin center will support local business opportunities as well as Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) opportunities for the Japanese, US and European market. This is in line with Tianjin’s ambition to become a world class hub for global BPO operations.

TCS also announced that it had established its first office in Shenzhen targeting the boomi ng South China market to tap local, regional and global business opportunities.

Girija Pande , Executive Vice President and Head, Asia Pacific Operations, Tata Consultancy Services said, “The Tianjin and Shenzhen facilities are strategic investments to strengthen our information technology infrastructure in order to leverage the local talent pool. These facilities will help us service the vibrant local market and support our international operations in Japan, US and Europe. This also reiterates our long term commitment to developing China as a strategic location in our off shoring and outsourcing value proposition.” He added “The Tianjin delivery center is an integral part of our Global Network Delivery Model™ which includes large delivery centers in India, Latin America, North America, Europe, all of them providing a quality of service and a certainty of outcome that our customers have come to expect from TCS.”

TCS continues to hire talented engineers and IT professionals from the region and its universities, strengthening its existing base of over 1,300 employees in China. The Tianjin facility will also serve as a extended Center of Excellence for Microsoft, Oracle and SAP to meet the unique technology needs of the customers. TCS has established Oracle and SAP center of excellence in Hangzhou and Shanghai

With its first branch established in China back in July 2002, TCS was the first Indian IT company to begin operations in China. Since then TCS has continued to pursue opportunities in the China market and has integrated itself into China’s development. TCS China can offer a unique value proposition of near shore, multilingual IT services delivery & quality to Manufacturing, Telecom, BFSI, Transportation and Retail organizations in China.

TCS provides best in class IT services to 30 large customers from financial sector, manufacturing, telecommunications, and government sectors in China. TCS operations based in the Hangzhou Binjiang Hi-Tech Industry Development Zone have been awarded the 2007 Hangzhou Best HR Award for its excellence in HR practices and Best Performing Company Award by the District Personnel Bureau of the Hangzhou Hi-tech Industry Development Zone.

Source: TCS

TCS Financial Solutions, the strategic business unit of Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), has launched TCS BaNCS Core Banking v10.

According to the official press statement, TCS BaNCS Core Banking version 10 has functional enhancements in the areas of lending, deposits, Islamic banking, origination, preferential pricing, securitization, trade finance, and treasury. It also features the business rule-driven TCS BaNCS Origination product.

“With the benefit of advanced SOA, this version can drive any bank’s efforts to transform operations, enhance customer service levels, drive new product development, enable targeted revenue growth and also achieve lower TCO,” said N. Ganapathy Subramaniam, president of TCS Financial Solutions.

Some other features include the ability to support business process orchestration using industry standard middleware products, multiple touch points for consistent user experience across multiple channels such as branch outlet, self service via the web, call center, IVR, and mobile banking, etc.