Date:10/10/2005 URL: http://www.thehindubusinessline.com/2005/10/10/stories/2005101001240200.htm

Back Pegasystems to double headcount, partners

Our Bureau

Mr Alan Trefler, Chairman and CEO, Pegasystems, and Col. S. V. Ramachandran, Regional Director, Nasscom, at an event in Hyderabad on Sunday. - - P.V. Sivakumar

Hyderabad , Oct. 9

PEGASYSTEMS, US-based technology solutions provider with operations in India, plans to double its India headcount and partner network.

The company currently works with Virtusa Corporation, Satyam Computer and Cognizant Technologies and is in the process of firming up with Kanbay and Tata Consultancy Services Ltd.

The Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Pegasystems, Mr Alan Trefler, said that the company, which has operations in India out of Virtusa, plans to expand from the current strength of 150 to 300 and to invest more."

Speaking at an event hosted by the National Association of Software and Services Companies and Virtusa here today on the business process management space, Mr Trefler said, "The BPM market, currently estimated at $1.5 billion, is growing at 25 per cent per annum, offering immense scope to work with large systems integrators."

"The current model is based on push strategy -- convincing enterprises to take to BPM through pilot installations and later take it to the enterprise level. But given the advantages, this will certainly drift towards a pull model where companies would proactively want to deploy these solutions," he said.

Referring to the recent win from HSBC, Mr Trefler said some of the largest financial, insurance and healthcare companies use Pegasystems to improve internal efficiencies. These include Citibank and AIG.

Business Process Management addresses issues relating to managing processes between individuals and systems, as well as between systems and systems within an organisation.

The chess challenge

MR Alan Trefler gave up chess to a lucrative career path that lead to computing. A master level chess champion, Mr Trefler, decided to get back to the game of chess, this time taking on 25 techies at one go at the Nasscom event.

"This chess challenge is something which I enjoy and see it as one move to partner more people. The best part is that chess is something that evolved in India and it is a wonderful experience to play this with people in their home land," he said.

"I was pained at the fact that IBM DeepBlue took on chess champion and outsmarted it. But the fact remains that the rules of the game have not changed over the years and it is easy to programme computers to outsmart humans," he said.