Date:27/10/2005 URL: http://www.thehindubusinessline.com/2005/10/27/stories/2005102702470400.htm

Back LogicaCMG to shift more work to India

Rukmini Priyadarshini

Bangalore , Oct 26

LOGICACMG plans to offshore application maintenance, BPO and infrastructure management work from various European centres to the Indian arm of its global delivery centre. While part of its British operations were offshored earlier, some of its Dutch activities — including applications maintenance and support, testing and business processes from the 6,000-people set-up — will be handled from the newly-created `Dutch Centre of Excellence', said Mr Geo van der Wilk, Managing Director, IDT, LogicaCMG Netherlands.

According to Mr Rahul Patwardhan, CEO, Global Delivery Centre, Bangalore, LogicaCMG, the company's cumulative investment in its India operations will increase to Ł30 million next year, from the Ł20 million invested so far.

"We will set up the infrastructure through a resource centre in Bangalore, working on a blended model, so Dutch customers can get the benefit of our knowledge of their requirements with the operational capability from India," he said, adding that he foresaw more work moving from The Netherlands to Bangalore.

"We are seeing growing demand after three years of flat IT spend in the Netherlands; we hope to increase our revenues while expanding in India," he added.

Mr Patwardhan said the company's global delivery network expected more work coming from The Netherlands and had made a start in getting work offshored from Germany, where the company employs 2,000 people, following a recent acquisition. In France, the company would have about 8,000 people and most of the European centres would benefit from offshoring work to India, he said.

The India centre will not only take over some of the current work but also modify and internationalise them to suit other geographies and markets. According to Mr van der Wilk, LogicaCMG Netherlands seeks to develop a biometric scanner for the human iris, similar to the one it developed for the Schipol airport. The Dutch centre of excellence will have 300 people by the year-end and the count will double by next year, he said.