Outsourcing: Naresh Lakhanpal And Hiro Notaney Of Patni Computer Systems (Part 3)

By guest author Tony Scott

Tony: I think the thing to look at when you talk about cultural issues is that you have to build a team from the top all the way down, and the culture has to work all the way down.

Naresh: Right.

Tony: It also has to be a culture that is sustainable, one that allows the company to grow and evolve.

Naresh: Absolutely. >>>

Thought Leaders In Cloud Computing: Dr. Reed Sheard, CIO Of Westmont College (Part 5)

Thought Leaders In Cloud Computing: Dr. Reed Sheard, CIO Of Westmont College (Part 4)

By Sramana Mitra and guest author Shaloo Shalini

SM: There are applications on Salesforce that are specific to fundraising; have you looked at those in this process?

RS: Well, I wanted a solution that was specific to higher education, non-profit fundraising versus just non-profit fundraising and other areas. I also wanted this solution to be connected to our enterprise resource planning (ERP) system in ways that made the two more valuable for our fundraisers. >>>

Thought Leaders In Cloud Computing: Dr. Reed Sheard, CIO Of Westmont College (Part 3)

By Sramana Mitra and guest author Shaloo Shalini

SM: In addition to e-mail, what other workloads at Westmont College have you moved to the cloud?

RS: We followed that with other projects based on community input here at Westmont. Another thing we really wanted to get right was wireless. When I arrived, the existing wireless setup covered approximately 30% of the campus, and the performance and liability in that was that it did not meet end user expectations. >>>

Outsourcing: Naresh Lakhanpal And Hiro Notaney Of Patni Computer Systems (Part 1)

By guest author Tony Scott

The outsourcing series makes its return with this ninth interview, in which I am talking with Naresh Lakhanpal, executive VP and president, Americas, and Hiro Notaney, VP of marketing, of Patni Computer Systems. Patni offers IT services, product engineering services, customer interaction services (CIS), business process outsourcing (BPO), and infrastructure management services. From its headquarters in Mumbai and its more than 33 offices and 22 delivery centers around the world, the company works with clients in industries ranging from insurance to manufacturing to media & entertainment. The interview begins with a discussion of Patni’s history and its plans to grow.

Tony: Hello, Hiro and Naresh. Let me give you some context for this interview. A couple of years ago Sramana Mitra wrote an article called “The Death of Indian Outsourcing.”

Naresh: I read it, yes.

Tony: It got a lot of knee-jerk reactions, but I think the point was well made that if you look at pure labor arbitrage . . .

Naresh: It doesn’t work.

Tony: Yes, exactly. The question is, how can the outsourcing industry continue if that is the only model? At a certain point you just run out of lower-cost labor. I wanted to find out how leaders in the industry have seen it change over the last few years, and how they see it evolving over the next few years. I pointed out to Sramana that for a number of companies I’ve worked with, they evolved into a solution-based approach, and those that did were able to continue to grow dramatically. >>>

Thought Leaders In Cloud Computing: Dr. Reed Sheard, CIO Of Westmont College (Part 2)

By Sramana Mitra and guest author Shaloo Shalini

SM: What e-mail system did Westmont College use before IT started exploring cloud-based solutions?

RS: We were using Postfix. It is an open source–based product, but our e-mail scale had grown so dramatically over the years and the storage behind it was getting problematic. >>>

Thought Leaders In Cloud Computing: Dr. Reed Sheard, CIO Of Westmont College (Part 1)

By Sramana Mitra and guest author Shaloo Shalini

In the multibillion-dollar market of higher education in the United States, we see an interesting trend whereby a combination of IT people and college communities are playing the role of an active “lead user” and using the cloud computing paradigm to make campus life simpler and information accessible for students through handheld devices. In this interview, we have some insights for you on evolutionary application integrations happening at Westmont and in higher education, from dispensing efficient IT infrastructure for effective collaboration to simplifying campus processes and other real-world tasks. During the interview, Sramana and Dr. Reed Sheard, VP and CIO of Westmont University College, discuss how Sheard has deployed cloud computing technologies and solutions to help the Westmont IT user community move to a higher level of service and helped the college IT team evolve to the next level in terms of business alignment. It is interesting to note that there has been explosive growth in the number of Apple devices in the higher education world, with applications taking a lead in terms of the user base compared to pure browser-based or Internet applications and the absence of Amazon’s Kindle, which is positioned as the textbook of the future in higher education but still needs a volume of textbooks to be made available on it and still lacks the ease with which iPad users can make notes and collaborate. >>>

Catching Up On Readings: African Entrepreneurs Emerging

This week’s roundtable included BongoLive!, a startup from Tanzania. This blog has occasionally covered entrepreneurship in Africa, primarily through the stories of VisionSpring and the Nigerian clothing design industry. I hope to hear more from entrepreneurs living and working in this incredibly diverse continent as 1M/1M expands. Click on the full article for the rest of the week’s posts. >>>