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News round-up: Tata Consultancy Services, Capgemini, Strateg

Published: Feb 10, 2011

 Consulting       

Welcome to this week's penultimate news round-up on Consult THIS. Today we feature a couple of super-massive (100,000+) consulting and outsourcing shops and one modest (< 100) Alaskan political outfit.

First up we hear from Indian giant Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), which signed an enormous five-year contract with United Arab Emirates telecom provider du (yes, just du) to manage the company's IT infrastructure. The deal, signed yesterday at du's corporate headquarters in Dubai, will allow du to continue its "aggressive growth strategy and its continuous focus on enhancing the company's capabilities in service delivery." The deal also signals a major victory—both symbolic and financially lucrative—in TCS's campaign to become the region's foremost tech consultancy, ahead of competitors IBM, Wipro, Infosys and Cognizant. Just why is the du contract so valuable? The company, started in 2007 and part-owned by the UAE government, is an emerging player in the burgeoning Middle Eastern telecom market; in the four years since its conception, it has staked claim to the Dubai business market and grown its customer base to more than 4 million users. With seemingly unlimited growth looming on the horizon, TCS could soon find itself managing the IT services of one of the world's biggest telecom providers.

Capgemini announced yesterday that it had struck up a strategic partnership with business software provider SuccessFactors to combine the former's consulting and implementation services with the latter's software expertise and proprietary software suite. That suite is SuccessFactors' Business Execution, or BizX, which already boasts more than 8 million users across 168 countries. A press release noted that the partnership will allow each firm to provide "end-to-end solutions" to client companies looking to save time, energy, and cash. "Working with SuccessFactors, Capgemini Consulting's goal is to digitize our customers' people processes in order to drive business execution, strategic alignment, workflow enablement and business intelligence," said Barbara Spitzer, a Capgemini Consulting VP, "and to ultimately help them create a difficult to copy competitive differentiator." While the "partner" label is the highest level at which SuccessFactors rolls out its software, it does not indicate any sort of merger or collaboration beyond strategic cooperation.

Ethan Berkowitz is the latest in a long line of politicians who, upon ending or delaying their work on behalf of the people, have taken their talents to the consulting industry. Berkowitz, the Democratic candidate for governor of Alaska in 2010, announced today that he would join Seattle-based Strategies 360 as a senior vice president. At the firm, which fancies itself the premier communications consultancy in the Northwest, Berkowitz will "do something on the energy front." The longtime state congressman and Harvard grad also hails from a background in entrepreneurship and law.

Happy Thursday.

For more information:
Business Standard
SuccessFactors Partners with Capgemini Consulting
Alaska Dispatch

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