EPAM Receives Preferred Supplier Status from Bosch Group

Newtown, PA — June 10, 2010 — EPAM Systems, Inc., the leading software engineering and IT Outsourcing (ITO) provider in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE), announced today that it has been selected as a Preferred Supplier of the Bosch Group, an award in recognition and appreciation of EPAM’s outstanding performance in custom software development and application support during the last 3 years.

EPAM has been a development partner to the Bosch Group since 2007, successfully delivering several critical software development projects, the latest achievement being a custom Supplier Relationship Management (SRM) system that replaced multiple legacy applications underpinning the business dealings with tens of thousands of global suppliers and also provides sophisticated SRM specific BI features to Bosch’s executive leadership. The solution was developed and is continually enhanced and supported by EPAM’s engineering teams led by business analysts and engagement management from EPAM Germany, together with engineering teams in the development centers in CEE that provide a balance of domain and process knowledge with technology and management skills in software development and testing. Belarus and Russia locate the largest part of EPAM’s engineering talent pool.

“Any client award or recognition is an honor for the whole staff of EPAM. In this case, given the well-known, stringent levels of excellence and quality that the Bosch Group demands globally in all forms of engineering including software, our teams should be exceedingly proud to be recognized in the upper echelons of Bosch's supplier eco-system with this Preferred Supplier status,” commented Karl Robb, President EU Operations, EVP EPAM Group. “EPAM’s unmatched technology skills, extensive domain knowledge and excellence in distributed delivery of complex software solutions has resulted in a robust, flexible, high throughout, high-availability application that provides our client with significant process optimization and a competitive business edge.”

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European IT Outsourcing Trends: CEE Gains Momentum

IT Sourcing Europe, a European company specializing in nearshore IT outsourcing consultancy as well as market research and analysis, has announced the completion of its “European IT Outsourcing (ITO) Intelligence Report 2010: Central and Eastern Europe”. This is a comprehensive study of the European IT outsourcing demand and market trends. The Report targets at all types of Western European companies who either outsource or plan to outsource their IT functions nearshore.

The IT Sourcing Europe’s Report shows that:

• Outsourcing to Central and Eastern Europe is expected to grow over the next 10 years;

• Investors and management anticipate 30% revenue growth in 2010;

• CEE, above all regions, is expected to leverage its competitive advantage in the high-growth areas of offshoring and nearshoring and possibly move ahead as the most attractive labour arbitrage alternative for Western European clients;

• Low labour costs are not the only grounds for outsourcing. The human capital of the CEE region is one of the primary reasons why Western companies choose to outsource there.

Regarding the major ITO trends, 2010 anticipates a significant change in the European IT Outsourcing landscape:

• More small and mid-sized organizations are expected to outsource their software/web development nearshore, compared to pre-crisis times.

• Additionally, buyers become more demanding and challenge their ITO partners to differentiate their position and value.

• Today’s Western European companies are seeking a combination of speed, cost management and growth supported by business agility and technological innovation.


Source: IT Sourcing Europe

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$50 Billion Saved Through Sourcing

According to a survey conducted by TPI, the leading global sourcing advisory firm, companies have reduced their spend on IT services and business transformation by almost one fifth by turning to outsourcers, thus saving $50 bn.

The firm surveyed 120 companies it had advised on sourcing over the last five years. TPI found its clients saved on average more than 33 per cent. After one-time and ongoing management expenses, the savings averaged more than 17 per cent.

According to TPI chairman and CEO Michael Connors the majority of businesses, 60 per cent, said that reducing costs was "their number one reason for implementing sourcing strategies".

Last year Europe became the world's highest spender on outsourcing, with companies based in Europe spending more on IT outsourcing than those based in any other region of the world.

Source: TPI

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Software R&D globalization

Zinnov, meaning Zeal in Innovation, the leading management consulting company, has recently provided a study - “Software R&D and Globalization Insights”. The scope of the study is to conduct a global software R&D spend analysis across a group of software product companies. To gain insights on the topic multiple stakeholders such as Vice Presidents, Senior Directors, General Managers, were interviewed.

Some of the findings of the survey are:

• The impact of the economic uncertainty was visible on R&D budgets as companies planned to optimize on the investments over the last 12 months. Some of the small to midsized companies (less than USD 1 bn in revenue) have been able to keep the R&D investments low, as they offshore a significant portion of their R&D to low cost destinations such as India and China. For larger companies, most of the R&D investments (about 80%) are kept in the US.

• Most large companies are now looking towards keeping R&D budgets flat while increasing their investment on new products. This has led companies to invest more on new development related activities in the product development life cycle. As a result, the quality of talent has become critical and companies are now laying emphasis on hiring talent so as to maintain effective staffing ratio. The focus on quality mandates increased investments on R&D related workforce for a majority of companies.

• More development and QA/testing related work is expected to be sent to offshore locations hence reducing the total investment on mature products

• Most large companies are now looking towards maximized value, rather than a pure cost arbitrage in terms of their relationships with product development service providers. However, the percentage of outsourced projects is still pretty low meaning there’s a bright future awaiting outsourced product development (OPD) industry.


Source: Zinnov

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Vertical IT Spending to Go Upwards

According to a new report from IT research and advisory firm Gartner, IT spending across all industry markets is forecast to exceed $2.4 trillion in 2010, an increase of 4.1% compared to same period last year, with banking and financial industries leading the way. Government agencies and health care providers are also expected to boost their IT this year.

The report says that IT spending by banking and financial industries will grow by 4.6% to $396.9bn in 2010, while total IT spending by communications media and services market is expected to reach $394.2bn, marking a 4.4% increase from the previous year. National and international government will show the strongest growth in 2010, with an increase of 6.2% in IT spending. Manufacturing and natural resources, and wholesale trade will experience the weakest growth through 2014, growing at 2009-2014 CAGRs of 3.0% and 3.1%, respectively.

"2010 will see IT spending in all major industries returning to growth, although that growth will vary by individual sector", Gartner analyst Kenneth Brant said.

Source: CBRonline.com

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European IT Services Market Growth

According to a recent report provided by the International Data Corporation (IDC), the premier global provider of market intelligence, advisory services, and events for the information technology, telecommunications, and consumer technology markets, demand for IT services is anticipated to grow by 2.2 per cent for the year 2011, with IT outsourcing being the main driver behind this.

The study shows that IT budgets have stabilized along with the easing of economic conditions, resulting in some companies to slowly start increasing spend again. Laura Converso, research manager, IDC European Software and Services, said: "Demand for outsourcing will pick up towards the second half of 2010."

She also added that the need for IT services will be most prominent this year in the UK, Germany and the Nordics.


Source: ihotdesk

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Healthy Growth of BI Market

According to a new report from market research firm Gartner, Inc., the business intelligence software market was one of the segments that significantly outperformed the overall enterprise software market in 2009.

The study revealed that the worldwide market for business intelligence, analytic applications and performance management software saw revenues exceed $9.3 billion last year, a rise of more than four per cent compared with 2008 revenues of $8.9billion.

“Even though growth was nowhere near the levels of 2008, and by no means immune to the recession, BI showed that it is not as cyclical as many other software areas, recording healthy growth in one of the toughest years recorded in software history," said Dan Sommer, a senior research analyst at Gartner.

BI was one area of IT that businesses were not prepared to push aside due to cost pressures. Mr. Sommer explained that “organizations have generally continued their BI projects, hoping that the resulting transparency will allow them to cut costs and improve productivity in a bid to remain competitive”.

Source: ihotdesk

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