In The News Archives - Page 122 Of 213

Hybrid IT: The Model of Choice for a Growing Set of Business Challenges | In the News

March 5, 2018

By now nearly every organization has taken advantage of cloud computing in some form or other—Infrastructure as as Service (IaaS), Platform as a Service (PaaS), and Software as a Service (SaaS). Countless studies have shown that the business benefits of cloud are just too significant to pass up.

That said, few organizations are prepared to adopt a “cloud only” approach. In many cases that’s because they continue to derive the maximum return from their systems already in place, on-premise or hosted. As a result, organizations today often operate mixed environments incorporating public and private clouds along with core systems of record like ERP. According to a recent Harvard Business Review study, 63% of organizations are now pursuing such a “hybrid IT” approach.

So what, exactly, are the main advantages of a hybrid IT model, which often combines core ERP systems of record with cloud solutions of engagement? The upshot: While hybrid IT may be taking center stage at many companies today, it’s doing so for a number of different reasons.

A recurring refrain is that changing customer expectations and new business processes and systems call for more flexibility from IT.
“Our research indicates that 77% of enterprises are actively pursuing a hybrid cloud strategy, with one in three migrating their production workloads to the cloud,” said Yugal Joshi, Practice Director at Everest Group.

Linkedin 2018 Workplace Learning Report is out and loud – Where are the developers? | In the News

March 1, 2018

The Linkedin 2018 Workplace Learning Report is out and takes the pulse of the current L&D trends.

The survey is based on the responses from 1,200 L&D or HR professionals, 400 people managers, 200 executives and 2,200 learners from North America, Europe, and Asia.

However, from a developer’s perspective, the results of the report seem… troubling. L&D and HR professionals, as well as people managers and executives, appear to pay a ton of attention on the development of soft skills of employees while the development of technical skills, as part of a company’s L&D program, seems of little significance. Let’s have a closer look at some of the results.

According to the survey, “talent developers are preparing their workforce for automation by naming ‘training for soft skills’ their #1 priority”; and it makes sense, right? You want your employees to be ready for the automation that DevOps brings as its core, therefore, you invest in the development of soft skills among your employees so that they have the knowledge to navigate the new age of company culture.

But what about the actual developers; the people behind the development of these automations? Why don’t they enjoy that generous of a share of a company’s resources for the development of their skills, the technical skills to be more precise?

When talking about DevOps, developers carry a huge part of the burden through the automation process and, as Yugal Joshi argued, “they’re not at all pleased with that and believe that they are being asked to address IT operations’ laggardness”.

IT revenues: Top Four see US pie shrink in Dec quarter, even as Europe’s goes up | In the News

February 26, 2018

The top four IT companies — Tata Consultancy Services, Cognizant, Infosys and Wipro — saw a decline in revenue (in percentage terms) from the US but an increase in revenue from Europe during the December 2017 quarter, when compared with the corresponding period in the previous fiscal.

This is one of the few instances when all the four witnessed such a pattern in earnings during a quarter, said sources. The US is the biggest market for them, followed by Europe.

The decline in revenue from the US happened due to cyclical factors, said Jimit Arora, Partner at research firm Everest Group. Regulatory uncertainties in the US impacted banking and financial services and healthcare (major revenue contributing sectors), while the retail segment is undergoing cost optimisation, he said.

Fresh H-1B memo means more paper trail for Indian IT | In the News

February 26, 2018

Indian IT services firms may see a higher number of requests for further evidence from US immigration authorities on their applications for H-1B visas, delaying the deployment of engineers on projects on work visa and increasing their cost.

Under the Trump administration’s new visa policy announced on Thursday, companies have to prove that the employees they send to the US on H-1B visas have “specific and non-speculative qualifying assignments in a speciality occupation” for the entire visa period. The memo issued by the US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) office makes it compulsory to seek evidence on the visa petitioners’ speciality occupation. This, say analysts, would increase red tape.

“We do not believe that the prospect of near-term immigration reform passing is likely. However, there is a wide range of ability to administratively change the existing regulations which will likely further restrict the large Indian firms’ use of non-US labour in their onshore model. This letter is a great example of this happening,” said Peter Bendor-Samuel, CEO of global IT research firm Everest Group. “This memo is a clear example of this current administration looking to constrain us of non ..

Critical Factors to Consider Before Selecting a Nearshore Location, Part 9: Putting It All Together | In the News

February 15, 2018

There is good news for the Latin American and Caribbean countries fighting for nearshore business: there is now more to go around than ever before.

This sentiment is shared by Salil Dani, vice president in the global sourcing service line for the Dallas-based consulting and research company Everest Group. Embracing the nearshore is no longer just a novel idea. He says the service providers in Latin America and the Caribbean are increasingly being viewed as an essential part of the strategies maintained by the Fortune 500 companies that have been in the outsourcing game for decades, such as General Electric, Citigroup, Proctor & Gamble, and Bank of America.

“They are growing a lot in Latin America in particular,” says Dani. “Within Latin America, there could be questions as to whether you want to go to somewhere like Mexico or Costa Rica depending upon what you want to do or other factors. But nearshoring as a proportion is growing in terms of headcount and in terms of revenue. The time-zone alignment creates a huge plus.”

IT majors see an increase in utilisation rate | In the News

February 13, 2018

As the tech titans grapple with digital and changing consumer behaviour, their emphasis on improving productivity of their workforce seems to be paying off with utilisation levels improving by up to 600 basis points (100bps = 1 percentage point).

Assessing utilisation levels is a significant part of the financial review process as these numbers indicate the workforce efficiency of the company. With multiple winds of change impacting the IT sector – from tightening client spends to digitalisation and automation – finding the right person with the right skill, or reskilling the existing workforce, has become paramount.

Everest Group CEO Peter Bendor Samuel said, “As the industry moves from the labour arbitrage factory model to the technology-based digital model, the revenue per person rises and fewer people are needed.”

Cognizant earns more per person as IT sector moves to tech-based digital model | In the News

February 12, 2018

Cognizant’s revenue grew 10% in 2017 even as its headcount fell by 200 from the previous year, for the first time in its history, a performance that experts said the rest of the IT sector is working hard to emulate.

IT companies, whose growth typically marches hand-in-hand with headcount growth, have been talking about decoupling the two for years but Cognizant is the first to show success over an entire reporting annual reporting period. The Teaneck, New Jersey-headquartered firm reports results for the calendar year, while Indian-listed IT services companies follow an April-March reporting period.

“As the industry moves from the labour arbitrage factory model to the technology-based digital model, the revenue per person rises and fewer people are needed,” said Peter Bendor-Samuel, CEO of IT consultancy Everest Research. “Cognizant is one of many firms which is driving hard into the new digital marketplace and this effort is showing results both in their increased growth and the improved revenue per person and falling headcount,” he said.

An even shorter Amazon HQ2 short list | In the News

February 6, 2018

Eric Simonson of Everest Group Research said his short list of top contenders to land Amazon’s HQ2 consists of Atlanta, Boston, Chicago, Dallas, New York City, Washington, D.C., and Toronto.

On KING 5’s The Sound Podcast, Simonson said he believes Amazon’s decision will come down to scalability of talent, business mix, time zone, and physical proximity.

It’s getting crowded in here: leveraging crowdsourcing for app delivery | In the News

February 5, 2018

As the application services industry has evolved and grown over the last three decades, the technology ecosystem has expanded to comprise companies delivering applications across SaaS, traditional license, and open source models. Everest Group believes that, with digitalization as a strategic enterprise priority, the application services industry is on the cusp of another disruption, one that cannot be addressed using traditional app delivery methods.

The second league rules in BPO | In the News

February 1, 2018

For the first time, smaller business services centers have won with the leaders. Thanks to Brexit they will grow even more.

This was not yet the case in the business services sector. Although investors have always chosen not only the most popular Kraków, Warsaw and Wrocław, but also a few smaller cities in Poland, in the first half of 2017, for the first time the second and third league attracted almost 70 percent. all new service centers – according to the Everest Group report.

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Category: In The News