Karvy launched a subsidiary to focus on financing and accounting BPO.A company that bills itself as the largest non-bank financial institution in India has launched a BPO unit.
Karvy this week unveiled KGS (Karvy Global Services Ltd.) as a subsidiary.
KGS will focus on finance and accounting BPO (business process outsourcing).
Services include accounts receivables and payables processing, financial reporting, transaction analysis, investment analysis and tax/audit services.
Karvy's original business was financial consulting, but the company has branched into brokerage services, merchant banking and personal finance advisory services.
Karvy tapped Arthur Flew to head KGS. Flew was most recently a founding member of MphasiS' BPO operation, according to a KGS spokesperson.
MphasiS provides finance and accounting BPO among other services.
The finance and accounting category ranks among the fastest growing BPO segments, according to Stan Lepeak, managing director of research at EquaTerra Inc., an outsourcing advisory firm.
He cited demand for transaction processing-oriented services such as accounts payable and accounts receivable and credit collection.
However, the practice of offshoring finance and accounting services "really hasn't taken off yet," added Lepeak, who cited complications surrounding issues such as compliance.
KGS runs three outsourcing centers in Hyderabad, India, where the subsidiary is based.
The company's U.S. headquarters is in New York. In addition to finance and accounting BPO, the company also offers back-office processing for such industries as healthcare, human resources outsourcing, and helpdesk support.
Lepeak said KGS' debut demonstrates that finance and accounting BPO are "becoming more prevalent and more mainstream."
That said, Lepeak said he doesn't expect a flood of financial players to enter the market. Indeed, Karvy's entry runs counter to how U.S. companies with similar backgrounds treat outsourcing. Karvy was founded by chartered accountants, professionals parallel to certified public accountants in the United States
But while Karvy has decided to pursue BPO, U.S. firms with accounting in their backgrounds have opted to divest BPO units.
Earlier this year, Convergys Corp. purchased the finance and accounting BPO business of Deloitte Consulting's Deloitte Consulting Outsourcing LLC subsidiary.
Click here to read more about Accenture's seven-year outsourcing contract with Elpida Memory.
"In the states and many countries in the West, you see the financial institutions that do audit work and accounting work divest themselves of outsourcing," Lepeak said.
Next Page: Radware revamps go-to-market strategy.
Radware Revamps Go-To-Market Strategy
Radware Ltd. has retooled its product line, unifying its collection of application delivery product under a common umbrella.
The company this week unveiled its APSolute product line, which includes ASIC application switches that provide load balancing, TCP acceleration, intrusion prevention and remote access, among other services.
Radware launched a channel program in June.
Read more here about Radware's three-pronged channel program.
"We have created for ourselves and our partners a much more comprehensive, cohesive way to explain what Radware does," said Paul Fiore, the company's vice president of channel management.
Radware will discuss its revised product lineup with the 200 attendees expected to participate in the company's partner forum, which begins Thursday in Miami. Early impressions are favorable.
"They now have an umbrella and a storyline that helps describe their family of products," Kurt Loock, president of Cincinnati-based solutions provider DPS.
Loock said he believes Radware's improved product narrative will have more appeal to customers than a sales pitch that directs them to "this or that box."
He said the APSolute approach may also provide Radware a road map for developing and enhancing its products going forward.
Radware's retooling isn't strictly a branding exercise. With the debut of APSolute, the company has made its operating system, APSolute OS, a standard feature on all of its products.
The OS, formerly known as SynApps, shipped with some Radware products and was an add-on for others.
"We've completely reversed that strategy," Fiore said. "All of our products are running APSolute OS and everything builds from there," he added.
Radware's APSolute set now includes two application front-end products, AppDirector and AppXcel.
AppDirector is the latest version of Radware's local and global load balancer, formerly called Web Server Director.
A spokesperson for Radware said the product now includes support for voice over IP, streaming media, Citrix and secure LDAP applications.
AppXcel, meanwhile, is an entirely new product for application tuning.
Also under the APSolute label are Radware's DefensePro security switch and two application access solutions: LinkProof and LinkProof Branch.
Next Page: Double duty for Accenture.
Double Duty For Accenture
Accenture late last month landed a pair of outsourcing contracts with NewPage Corp., which manufactures coated paper.
Under an IT outsourcing pact, Accenture will manage NewPage's enterprise IT functions, including infrastructure operations and maintenance.
In that capacity, Accenture is teaming with (i)Structure, a data center outsourcing firm, based in Broomfield, Colo. Accenture has a strategic alliance with (i)Structure.
Accenture's other outsourcing deal with NewPage covers payroll, benefits administration, health and welfare administration, contact center management and associated IT services.
NewPage began operating as an independent company on May 2, following the acquisition of MeadWestvaco Corp.'s printing and writing papers business.
IBM Bolsters Grid Partner Roster
IBM on Tuesday disclosed a handful of alliances intended to boost its grid computing offering.
The grid alliance activity involves Absoft Corp., SAS Institute Inc., and Univa Corp. Grid computing, part of IBM's virtualization strategy, seeks to harness disparate computing resources to focus on specific problems.
Absoft announced that its High Performance Computing Software Development Kit has been designed to run on IBM's Grid and Grow cluster hardware.
IBM in August launched its Grid and Grow initiative, which aims to provide a packaged set of software, hardware and services that let customers deploy grids.
IBM, meanwhile, cited SAS as the latest software vendor to join the Grid and Grow offering.
SAS will participate in IBM's Ready for Grid computing program, which validates that an application can operate in a grid environment.
The lack of applications optimized for grid computing has been a barrier to broader customer deployment, according to market watchers.
Finally, IBM and Univa agreed to provide what the companies termed an "enterprise-ready" release of the open-source Globus Toolkit on IBM platforms.
Univa will deliver a commercially supported release of Globus for use on IBM eServer products running AIX and Linux.
ComPiere, BakBone Schedule Partner Sessions
ComPiere Inc., a provider of open-source business applications, scheduled intensive and advanced training sessions for the company's ERP/CRM solution for Nov. 7-11 and Nov. 14-16, respectively.
The sessions will take place in ComPiere's offices in the Portland Business Accelerator building, Portland, Ore.
In addition, BakBone Software, a maker of data protection software, has set its first partner summit for Jan. 17-19, 2006 in San Diego.
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