Kenya next outsourcing hub

The newly formed ICT board in Kenya has started a campaign to market the country as the next outsourcing destination in the world after India, reports All Africa.com.

The funded board is planning to use the Sh8 billion loan it received from the World Bank in May to expand the use of existing bandwidth, increase capacity for outsourcing as well as digitise the country's 210 constituencies.

The key objectives of the project include digitisation of company and land registries and giving pensioners access to information on their accounts.

Small banks in India, particularly those in the co-operative sector, are finding a cheap alternative to bring hi-end services to customers, even as big banks spend crores on core banking, reports EconomicTimes.

By partnering with application service providers, co-operatives are able to rent out the core banking technology from IT providers without locking their capital in purchasing the solution.

Greater Bombay Co-operative Bank, Surat People's Co-operative Bank, Municipal Co-operative Bank and another Tumkur-based co-operative bank are among those who are outsourcing their entire back-end to C-Edge.

Google has announced plans to move into the enterprise space by partnering with the consulting and outsourcing firm Capgemini, to deliver Google Apps Premiere Edition as an Office alternative for customers, reports Arstechnica.

Google will host the applications and data on its servers, and Capgemini will handle deployment, support, hardware, and security.

Capgemini primarily wants to offer Google Apps as a complementary service for companies with employees who are already using services in "underground" or unauthorised method.