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Cognizant overtakes Infosys...Becomes No.2 IT firm behind TCS

Cognizant Technology Solutions Corp has for the first time ever overtaken Infosys in terms of quarterly revenues during the April to June quarter of 2012. Exactly a year earlier, it had overtaken Wipro on the same basis.

Cognizant has traditionally worked with relatively lower margins, helping it win more contracts, according to reports. Cognizant added six new strategic customers in the quarter ended June 30, 2012, including Philips Electronics NV, according to reports.

Cognizant beat its own earnings per share (EPS) guidance for the April-June period and met its revenue forecast.

The company raised its EPS guidance by 2 cents for 2012 and affirmed its revenue forecast.

“Cognizant once again delivered industry-leading growth despite a challenging macro-economic environment,” Gordon Coburn, president of Cognizant, said in a statement.

The company forecast third quarter (July-September) revenues of US$1.87bn, or ~5% higher than the preceding three months

More visa trouble for Infosys as another ex-employee files case

As if one visa case filed against IT major Infosys by its ex-employee is not enough, another former employee of the company, Satya Dev Tripuraneni, has filed a suit alleging the company of harassment for blowing the whistle on the impending visa row and tax fraud issue.

In the first case, Jack Palmer, a principal consultant with Infosys since 2008, filed a suit against Infosys in an Alabama state court last year, and accused the company of seeking his help to evade H1-B visa rules by sending unskilled employees to the US on short-term B1 business visas.

He pointed out that Infosys routinely brought Indian tech workers into the US on B-1 visas (business visas) to do work that required an H1-B visa ( non-immigrant employee visa).

H1-B visas are more expensive and harder to get than the B-1 which only allow an individual to attend conferences and business negotiations etc. Palmer also said that Infosys managers also evaded tax payments locally.

Palmer has also accused Infosys managers of mistreating him when he filed a complaint last year as a part of the company's whistle blower policy.

In Focus

Moody's assigns first-time ratings to Genpact; Outlook stable

Moody's Investors Service has assigned a Ba2 corporate family rating to Genpact Limited ("Genpact").

At the same time, Moody's has assigned a provisional (P)Ba2 foreign currency rating to the proposed senior secured credit facility to be drawn by three of Genpact's indirectly, wholly-owned subsidiaries under its guarantee and that of other material subsidiaries.

The outlook for both ratings is stable.

This is the first time Moody's has assigned ratings to Genpact. The assignment of a definitive debt rating is subject to a review of the final documentation, and to successful issuance of the proposed debt.

RATINGS RATIONALE

"Genpact's Ba2 Corporate Family Rating reflects its favourable market position in the upper, mid-sized tier of BPO service providers. Originally a captive unit of General Electric, Genpact has grown its Global Client business through strong organic growth and with small bolt-on acquisitions. This has resulted in a broad spread of customers both by industry and geography, while the locations of Genpact's delivery centres are similarly diverse," says Alan Greene, a Moody's Vice President -- Senior Credit Officer.

"However, the $550 million purchase of Headstrong in mid-2011 heralded the company's ambitions to grow revenue at a faster rate than the 15% growth seen in recent years, resulting in the conversion of a traditional cash surplus into net debt, and leading to expectations of a permanently leveraged balance sheet, albeit at modest levels," adds Greene, who is Moody's Lead Analyst for Genpact.

Domestic News

Infosys selected by India Post to transform Financial Services

Infosys, a global leader in consulting and technology, announced that it has been selected by the Department of Post, Ministry of Communications and Information Technology, Government of India for a mission-critical program that will enhance India Post's financial services across 150,000 post offices in the country. This is part of the 'India Post 2012' modernization program that aims at bringing transparency, agility, flexibility and scalability to India Post's operations.

Under the agreement, Infosys and India Post will embark on a transformational initiative, which encompasses Financial Services System Integration. This project, estimated at Rs 7bn, aims to transform India Post into a technology-enabled and autonomous market leader, by revolutionizing its financial operations and end-user services.

HCL Infosystems buys out remaining 40% stake in HCLI MEA

HCL Infosystems Ltd., India’s premier hardware, services and ICT Systems Integration and Distribution Company, today announced the buyout of the remaining 40% stake held by the NTS Group in HCL Infosystems MEA. HCL Infosystems Ltd., through its wholly owned subsidiary HCL Insys Pte. Ltd., Singapore has bought the stake in HCL Infosystems MEA FZCo. Following the transfer of shares, the FZCo shall be converted into a FZE (free zone establishment) owned solely by HCL Insys Pte. Ltd., Singapore. HCL Infosystems MEA FZE now becomes a wholly owned subsidiary of HCL Infosystems Ltd.

NTS Holding BVI was a leading IT services and Solutions Company based in Dubai. HCL Infosystems had earlier acquired 60% of NTS Group in 2010 to expand its global footprint in the Middle East and African market with direct operations to address the system integration and services need in these regions.

Indian IT firms plan to hire employees in US: reports

India's IT firms are stepping up hiring employees in the U.S.,according to reports.

Reports stated that MindTree Ltd aims to hire more Americans to staff four or five software-development centers.

While TCS also plans to hire 2,000 US employees, says report.

There are reports that Infosys also plans to hore 2,000 employees in US.

Pegasystems extends partnership with Mahindra Satyam

Persistent Systems named leading Player in Software/ISV R&D Segments: Zinnov

Infosys BPO rated Positive in Market Scope for North American Life Insurance Policy Administration Vendors report

Acer announces interesting and innovative engagement partner programme

Sundaram Business Services bags deals in BPO space

IT Automation Technologies don’t always play nice: Survey

Results Watch

Datamatics Global Q1 net profit up 13%

Sonata Software Q1 cons revenue at Rs4.03bn

Tech Mahindra Q1 net profit up 12%

Hinduja Global Q1 cons net profit at Rs193.7 mn

TAKE Solutions Q1 net profit at Rs252mn

International News

Cognizant Q2 revenue up 5%

Cognizant Technology Solutions Corporation, a leading provider of information technology, consulting, and business process outsourcing services, today announced its second quarter 2012 financial results.

Highlights – Second Quarter 2012

Quarterly revenue rose to $1.795 bn, up 4.9% sequentially and 20.9% from the year-ago quarter.
Quarterly diluted EPS on a GAAP basis was $0.82, compared to $0.67 in the year-ago quarter.
Quarterly diluted EPS on a non-GAAP basis, which excludes stock-based compensation expense, was $0.88, compared to $0.72 in the year-ago quarter.
GAAP and non-GAAP diluted EPS includes the impact of $0.02 in net non-operating foreign currency exchange loss.
Net headcount addition for the quarter was approximately 4,700.

“Clients continue to turn to Cognizant to help reinvent their business models in the face of secular industry changes, evolving demographics, and a new stack of social, mobile, analytics, and cloud technologies,” said Francisco D’Souza, Chief Executive Officer. “We are well positioned to capitalize on these opportunities due to our unique combination of management consulting and operational capabilities in areas such as large scale program management and change management.  With our robust global delivery model, we make the complexities of managing large scale transformation programs seamless and transparent to our clients.” 

“Cognizant once again delivered industry leading growth despite a challenging macro-economic environment,” said Gordon Coburn, President.  “This market downturn, as with those before, is serving as a catalyst for clients to embrace a broader range of our services.  Clients view us as a strong partner to achieve operational improvements in efficiency and effectiveness while simultaneously innovating for the future.”

Worldwide spending for IT outsourcing services on pace to reach $251.7 bn in 2012: Gartner

Worldwide spending for IT outsourcing (ITO) services is on pace to reach $251.7 bn in 2012, a 2.1 percent increase from 2011 spending of $246.6 billion, according to the latest outlook by Gartner, Inc.
 
The fastest-growing segment within the ITO market is cloud compute services, which is part of the cloud-based infrastructure as a service (IaaS) segment. Cloud compute services are expected to grow 48.7 percent in 2012 to $5.0 billion, up from $3.4 billion in 2011.
 
Spending on ITO in the Asia/Pacific region will grow 1 percent in U.S. dollars in 2012 and exceed 2.5 percent growth in 2013. With the exception of Japan, Australia, New Zealand, and to a lesser degree, Singapore and Hong Kong, the countries in Asia/Pacific are quite new in terms of outsourcing usage, understanding and sophistication. The growth is being driven by the large inflow of capital into Asia over the past three to five years, leading to the need among global and regional businesses to scale up their operations.

Google pays handsome 'death benefits' to deceased employees

Google's so-called "death benefits" include paying the deceased employee's spouse or domestic partner 50% of their salary for 10 years, according to media reports. This was revealed by Google's Chief People Officer Laszlo Bock in an interview this week to Forbes.

Not only that, all of the deceased employee's stocks vest immediately. In addition, each child of the deceased employee receives US$1,000 per month until age 19, or age 23 for full-time students.

What's more, these "death benefits" aren't just for permanent employees. All of Google's US employees qualify for these "death benefits".

Bock was quoted as saying by Forbes that the oldest Googler is aged 83.

You can now get Gmail info from Google search

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PC Market in Western Europe declined 2.4% in Q2 2012: Gartner

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