Markets scored big gains as investors think worst of recession is over, though many are uncertain about the speed of recovery
Better-than-expected consumer confidence index for May of 54.9, up from 40.8 in April, gave participants anecdotal evidence that economic conditions may be improving
Data showed that March durable goods orders rose, weekly Initial Jobless claims fell, continuing claims rose, and April new home sales climbed
Preliminary GDP showed 5.7% drop for the first quarter, which was a slight improvement from the 6.1% decline that had been reported in the advance GDP reading
Surge in crude oil prices lifted energy shares
Gold prices are now up more than 10% since hitting their 2009 lows in mid-April
Industry Roundup:
Tech services sector stocks were up 4% during the week
IBM announced that it has provided U.S. Lumber Group with a business intelligence (BI) solution that is providing the company with in-depth reporting capabilities in real time versus their original system that provided reports daily.
IBM has won four 2009 SAP(R) Pinnacle Awards, provided by one of its global partners, SAP AG. The awards were granted to leading SAP partners that have excelled in providing high-quality products, solutions and services to mutual customers.
Accenture announced that its Board of Directors has unanimously approved changing the company’s place of incorporation to Ireland from Bermuda.
CSC has been named Vivek Chopra as President of the company’s India operations, effective immediately. Chopra replaces Rajendra B. Vattikutti, who is retiring.
CSC announced that U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) awarded the company a task order to conduct scanning, indexing and file management operations at a records digitization facility. The contract has a one-year performance period and a value of $27 million.
Department of State (DoS) Bureau of Consular Affairs awarded CSC a task order to consolidate four legacy visa systems into one unified processing system. The task order has a one-year base period and four one-year options, bringing the estimated total five-year contract value to $36 million.
ACS announced an agreement to purchase UK-based Anix, an IT services and infrastructure solutions provider and wholly owned subsidiary of Xploite plc. ACS will pay approximately $50 million in cash upon completing the acquisition, which is expected to close prior to June 30, 2009.
TCS named N.Chandrasekaran, its present Chief Operating Officer, as the Chief Executive Officer designate and intends to appoint him as the Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer on retirement of the CEO, S. Ramadorai.
Infosys BPO has earned the highest rating, Level 5, for e-Sourcing Capability Model (eSCM-SP) by Carnegie Mellon University's IT Services Qualification Center
ICRA has retained its highest rating for corporate governance on IT firm Infosys Technologies, citing its transparent and disbursed ownership structure, among other reasons. The rating of CGR1 is the highest on ICRA’s Corporate Governance Rating (CGR) scale of CGR1 to CGR6.
HCL Technologies has emerged as the best managed entity in the list of top 50 global outsourcing vendors for 2009 compiled by the Black Book of Outsourcing , ahead of Indian IT services companies and global giants like Oracle. Other Indian outsourcing vendors in the list include — NIIT Technologies (20th), Wipro-Infocrossing (21st), Tata Consultancy Services (26th), Mastek (29th) and WNS Global(32).
Amerinet, a leading national healthcare group purchasing organization, has entered into an agreement that will make Perot System’s revenue cycle solutions available to Amerinet’s acute and alternate care site members
Wipro Infocrossing, a provider of managed infrastructure outsourcing services, and Sunoco, a manufacturer and marketer of petroleum and petrochemical products, announced a $34 million four-year contract extension and expansion of the companies' 13-year relationship.
Genpact was named Best ITO Service Provider and Best ITMS Provider during the recent Chinese Enterprise Informatization Top 500 Conference.
Huntsman has awarded a five year contract to Genpact to provide global accounts payable services to Huntsman’s operations across Europe, North America and Asia Pacific.
Markets closed the week in line with previous week’s close despite sell-off before the long Memorial Day holiday weekend
Housing starts during April came in at an annualized rate of 458,000, while building permits for April hit a rate of 494,000. Both marked record lows
Worse-than-expected jobless claims supported the premise that economic conditions remain tenuous. Initial claims for the week ending May 16 totaled 631,000, while continuing claims climbed to a new record of 6.66 million.
S&P Ratings revised its outlook on the U.K. to negative from stable
Debate around whether market's rounding action of past 2 weeks will turn into a correction or just a modest consolidation
Industry Roundup:
Tech services sector stocks were down 1% during the week
IBM won a seven-year strategic agreement from Ferrosan, an international consumer & healthcare company in Denmark, to manage Ferrosan's IT infrastructure
Russian Railways, one of the largest railway operators in the world, announced that it is working with IBM to help optimize its IT infrastructure and is using new technologies to improve its freight and passenger management systems
IBM has been selected by Ling Tung University to build a smarter healthcare system to monitor the health of senior citizens in Taiwan anywhere, at anytime
IBM announced that Gartner has ranked IBM as the worldwide market share leader in the Portal Products and User Interaction Tools enterprise software segment
IBM & Bulgarian government announced their cooperation in nano-science & a deal for IBM to support the creation of what will be the first Bulgarian nano-technology center
Accenture has signed a three-year deal to provide Carlsberg IT with management consulting, systems integration, application development and maintenance, and programme management services in Europe
CSC announced that it is joining the Mission Support Alliance LLC team as a subcontractor on the Department of Energy’s recently announced award of a Mission Support Contract, which will provide site-wide services to support clean-up work at its Hanford site in southeastern Washington state
Infosys, TCS and Wipro have featured in the list of 100 best performing technology companies in the world, 'Infotech 100' list for 2009, compiled by BusinessWeek
HCL Technologies has entered into an outsourcing services engagement with MTV Networks (MTVN) to help MTVN brands in managing technology-led solutions in digital content creation, media asset management, community networking and cross-brand programming. The key benefits to MTVN from this engagement include platform standardization, reliability and business continuity during transition.
HCL Technologies has announced that ICRA has assigned an A+ rating to the Rs 5 billion Commercial Paper Programme of HCL Technologies. The rating indicates highest credit quality rating assigned by ICRA to short term debt instruments.
Atheeb Telecom, Saudi Arabia’s latest telecom service provider, announced its new five-year contract with Wipro to deploy an end-to-end IT solution covering operations support systems/ business support systems (OSS/BSS) and underlying infrastructure components.
EXL Services marked its 10th anniversary by formally unveiling a new branding and visual identity with the new tagline "Go Next. Now" encapsulating its DNA of ‘the Relentless Pursuit of Excellence’. It underscores EXL's commitment to consistently raise the bar through differentiated Transformational Outsourcing services that deliver a unique value proposition to clients.
Markets logged a weekly loss of 5.0%, its worst in two months, on profit taking following the market's record April rally
US trade deficit widened to $27.6 billion in March, which is the first time in eight months that the deficit widened
April total retail sales decreased 0.4%, and sales less autos decreased 0.5% as compared with consensus forecast for total sales to be flat and sales excluding autos to increase 0.2%. However, the decline wasn't as sharp as what was seen in March, when total sales slid 1.3%, and sales less autos declined 1.2%.
March business inventory data showed a 1.0% decrease in inventories, which was largely in-line with expectations
Continuing jobless claims climbed more than expected to a record high of 6.56 million. With jobless claims mounting, many expect consumer spending to remain challenged
April CPI met expectations by coming in flat, while Core CPI saw a stronger increase than had been expected by coming in with a 0.3% monthly increase
Industrial production for April fell 0.5%, which wasn't as bad as what had been expected, and capacity utilization came in at 69.1%, moderately better than what was expected
Media reports said the cost of borrowing between banks had fallen, offering a refreshing sign that credit conditions were loosening
Industry Roundup:
Tech services sector was down 1% during the week
IBM has helped the Health Insurance Institute of Slovenia to roll out a new electronic health insurance card system across the country that enables healthcare providers to instantly and accurately check a patient's health insurance status and allows for health claims to be processed online.
HP Middle East introduced its latest Document Management technology, with the launch of products aimed at increasing efficiency and security of business-critical document workflow for companies in the Middle East
Accenture is reportedly about to open a subsidiary in India under a separate name with rates well below the premium-level pricing Accenture has traditionally charged, according to the Economic Times of India. As per the report, the new unit will bill at rates about 10% below the $27 or $28 hourly rate Accenture charges its clients.
CSC announced today that the US Army has awarded the company a task order to provide systems engineering, technical and program support for the Project Manager, Defense Communications and Army Transmission Systems. The task order has a one-year base period and two one-year options, bringing the estimated total three-year task order value to $226 million
CSC was awarded SAP Global Pinnacle Award for its achievements in global information technology outsourcing on the eve of SAPPHIRE, SAP’s annual customer conference. The company also was recognized as a finalist in the customer satisfaction category.
ACS has been awarded a $37.5 million contract to assist the state of Louisiana to oversee construction and handle claims of eligibility for the Small Rental Property Program, an initiative to rebuild rental property damaged by hurricanes Katrina and Rita.
ACS will provide Medicaid fiscal agent services to the State of Virginia under a five-year, $84 million contract. Under the contract, ACS will assume operations of the state's existing Medicaid management information system and enhance the system with 24-hour access for transactions processing and improved online provider enrollment.
TCS obtained a five-year contract to provide information-technology support to Volkswagen Group UK Ltd.
TCS and Infosys announced separately that Forrester cited them as Leader in its April 2009 report "The Forrester Wave(TM): Global IT Infrastructure Outsourcing, Q1 2009”
Infosys Australia’s recently formed strategic consulting group bagged its first big-bank client, one of the big four in Australia, this month for a range of IT consulting services.
Infosys and Oracle today announced the completion of the implementation of a global Human Capital Management (HCM) system, based on Oracles PeopleSoft Enterprise, at Weatherford International Limited.
Equitorial Trust Bank, one of the leading indigenous banks in Nigeria, has signed Infosys’ universal banking application, Finacle, to replace their current legacy Globus banking application. ETB joins other banks such as Hatton National Bank in Sri Lanka in moving away from the Globus to Temenos upgrade track and pitching tent with Finacle.
HCL AXON, integrated SAP services division of HCL Technologies, announced that Jet Aviation has selected HCL AXON`s proprietary maintenance, repair and overhaul (MRO) solution, iMRO, to optimize the management of MRO operations within their existing installations of SAP solutions
HCL Technologies announced that it has built a hosted SAP infrastructure for MIsys, a provider of integrated solutions for banking, treasury and capital markets, which will deliver predictable and standardized SAP performance for Misys’ end-to-end users across America, Europe and Asia. The benefits of the solution to its users include scalability, flexibility and ease of deployment for SAP applications.
HCL Technologies announced that it has engaged with Rockwell Automation to achieve referenced status as part of the Rockwell Software Enterprise Solution Partner Program. During the initial membership phase, the companies will collaborate on the delivery and integration of Rockwell Automation software and solutions by HCL's Manufacturing Solution Experts.
Cognizant and SAP AG today announced a global services partnership in an effort to deliver increased business value by streamlining their engagement and enabling both companies to respond quickly to the ever-changing needs of their customers
Wipro and SmartOps Corporation, the leading provider of enterprise-class supply chain optimization solutions, announced the launch of their holistic Multi-echelon Inventory Planning & Optimization offering
Wipro announced that it has signed a $34 million information technology services deal with U.S.-based refiner Sunoco Inc
Wipro Infotech becomes the first 'Platinum Partner' from India for Hitachi Data Systems. This alliance will help enterprise customers across verticals avail of the wide range of services, consultation and storage solutions
Patni announced that it was named the 2009 ‘IT Supplier of the Year’ by Weyerhaeuser, a leading provider of integrated forest products
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