Infosys BPO to boost presence

Infosys BPO, the business process outsourcing (BPO) arm of India's second largest IT services provider, Infosys Technologies, is looking at acquisitions worth $50 million to $200 million in areas where the company has a negligible presence, states Business Standard.

Some of the areas of interest could be manufacturing, insurance, media and entertainment, mainly in the US and Europe.

“The acquisitions will be funded through cash in areas where we have a small presence,” Amitabh Chaudhry, Infosys BPO's CEO and MD, said on the sidelines of the India Economic Summit in New Delhi.

Local authorities have got a bad deal from kitchen sink outsourcing deals with private industry and should take their most important IT functions back under the wing of the public sector, says consultancy Deloitte, according to ComputerWeekly.

Contrary to the belief in recent years that local authorities could save money by handing their entire IT departments over to private contractors, Deloitte said outsourcing suppliers should only be trusted with "highly commoditised IT functions, such as desktop, networks and data centres".

Councils could make "significant savings", make better use of their IT and do a better job for their constituents if they kept IT strategy and supplier management functions in-house, the firm said in a report, 'Taking control of IT'.

The US government's plan to withdraw tax breaks for American companies that export jobs is forcing Kenya's budding outsourcing industry into the unchartered waters of mergers and acquisitions that could change the shape of the business in the next decade, writes Business Daily.

Kenyan operators say they have had to open up to possible partnerships with US and British firms in readiness for the Obama administration's action that is expected to drastically reduce the amount of business that US companies outsource and tilt the ground in favour of home-grown firms.

If effected, the US action could slow down jobs growth in the outsourcing or ICT sector that the Kenya government has identified as a key pillar of the Vision 2030 development blueprint.