Wipro eyes Egypt for outsourcing

India, the offshoring capital of the world, is now outsourcing software and back-office projects to Egypt as vendors like Wipro plan to send more domestic work to the most populous Arab country to leverage lower costs and availability of skilled professionals, says Economic Times.

Wipro, which counts Bharti Airtel, Unitech Wireless and Dena Bank among its top customers, said with 10% to 15 % lower costs than India, and availability of required technical skills across different programming languages including Windows and Unix, Egypt is emerging as an attractive location for offshoring.

“We believe that 20% of our work can be offshored to Egypt,” said Anand Sankaran, senior VP and business head, India and Middle East Business, Wipro.

UK-based Halcyon Software, a developer of systems management software for iOS and other platforms, is growing its presence in the US with the goal of attracting new customers, writes IT Jungle.

But instead of concentrating on individual AS/400 shops, Halcyon will primarily target outsourcing firms that run large data centres, which in turn will use Halcyon's software to manage the individual clients' systems. It's a practice that has already proved successful for the software company in the US.

Halcyon Software was at the recent Common conference in Reno, Nevada, to announce the expansion of its office in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and release new versions of several products.

The Science, Technology and Innovation Ministry (Mosti) will be including its efforts to boost the country's shared services and outsourcing (SSO) industry as part of its key performance index, reports Malaysia Star.

Datuk Dr Maximus Ongkili, Mosti Minister, said the ministry wants more emphasis on the industry to help it mature, as well as to encourage the setting up of new SSO companies and to push the existing players to develop further.

In 2007, the local SSO sector accounted for RM5.3 billion (R12.6 billion) of MSC Malaysia's revenue and created 32 500 jobs. The sector's performance for last year, which is still being assessed, is expected to top those figures.