Microsoft sells Razorfish for $530m

Microsoft is to sell online marketing agency Razorfish in a $530m stock and cash deal with French advertising firm Publicis Groupe.

Razorfish will maintain its current management as an autonomous unit of the VivaKi division of Publicis, according to the New York Times.

Analysts said the recession's effect on advertising meant Microsoft had to settle for less than the $600m to $700m it had been hoping for, according to other US media reports.

The five-year agreement calls for Publicis to buy display and search advertising on Microsoft properties like MSN.com and Bing, while Microsoft is to spend a certain amount with Razorfish.

Formerly known as Avenue A/Razorfish, Microsoft acquired the agency as part of a $6bn takeover of aQuantive in 2007.
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Razorfish is one of the largest digital agencies, with 2,000 employees. Its clients include Dell, Audi, Disney and Nike.

Publicis Groupe beat auction bids from the world's largest agency company, WPP, and the largest agency company in Japan, Dentsu.

Publicis ranks fourth worldwide, behind WPP, the Omnicom Group and the Interpublic Group of Companies.

"The deal is another step forward in realising our strategic vision of building a world leader in digital communications," said Publicis chief Maurice Lévy in a statement.

The deal is expected to close before the end of the year.

Wipro Tech ties up with Oracle

BANGALORE: Wipro Technologies said on Monday that its Business Process Outsourcing divison, Wipro BPO has partnered with Oracle for
'best-of-breed HR platform solutions.'

Wipro has also selected The Hackett Group, a global strategic advisory firm, to provide empirical data, best practices and world-class performance insights on the development of its innovative bundled solution platform, it said in a release here.

The solution simPlify, allows employers to reduce and control cost as it provides an opportunity to centralise and standardise processes while eliminating duplicative management structures.

The solution has the ability to leverage a many-to-one technology capability, while maximising service quality and HR customer satisfaction
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Top 100 Global outsourcing companies of 2009

You can love it or hate it, but you cannot avoid it. I was referring to outsourcing. It is here to stay. The only difference is who gets what. If the work isn’t outsourced to India, then it has to be outsourced to someplace else. It could be China, Vietnam, The Philippines or even Texas. This is actually proven by the top list of 100 global outsourcing companies. The recent turmoil in the Indian IT industry did not deter them from featuring in the list. As many as 12 companies (may be more) were featured in the list of 100.

International Association of Outsourcing Professionals (IAOP) has released the list of top 100 global outsourcers for 2009. The complete list will be available on May 4 in the Fortune magazine. With a lot of googling I found quite a few companies (47 to be precise) which are listed there. The companies below have announced through their press releases that they were selected.

As always the first 2 companies are taken by the American outsourcers - Accenture and IBM. Now, I really don’t understand what the outsourcing fuss is all about. Third spot is occupied by India’s Infosys. The rest of the order is not very clear yet but many Indian companies have made it to the list. At least 4 Indian companies have made it to the top 10.

HCL, TCS, Genpact, Mindtree, Tech Mahindra, Applabs etc.. are the Indian companies in the list. Not much of a change in terms of rankings of the Indian IT companies. The ranking gains or losses are in single digits. Infosys stayed the same, TCS gained one rank and the same trend continues with other companies.

Infosys and TCS are close but not there yet to takeover IBM. With the proposed acquisition of Sun Microsystems, it might be even tougher for Infosys and TCS and in particular for Infosys because of its risk averse strategy. HCL with its recent acquisition and Tech Mahindra (if it acquires Satyam) might be serious contenders for next year. Not to beat but to compete.

Some companies have rankings and some don’t. Here is the list in no particular order :

1.
1. Accenture
2. IBM
3. Infosys (2009 rank 3) (source)
4. TCS (2009 rank 6)
5. Wipro Technologies (2009 rank 7)
6. Tech Mahindra (2009 rank 10)
7. HCL Technologies (2009 rank 11)
8. Mastek (2009 rank 16)
9. 24/7 Customer (2009 rank 28)
10. ITC Infotech (2009 rank 40)
11. Patni (2009 rank 46)
12. Mindtree Consulting (2009 rank 54)
13. Intelenet Global Services
14. Applabs
15. Grubb & Ellis
16. Corbus
17. Bleum
18. The Symbio Group
19. Oce Business Services
20. Syntel Inc
21. Syngy
22. Ceridian
23. Auriga
24. Zinnov
25. Cartas Corporation
26. Zensar Technologies
27. Expense Management Solutions
28. vCustomer Corporation
29. MajescoMastek
30. Colliers International
31. Exigen Services
32. Reksoft
33. Oce Business Services Inc
34. Archstone Consulting
35. BeyondSoft
36. Nair & Co
37. ChinaSoft International
38. SEI Corporation
39. Knoah Solutions
40. MERA Networks
41. Lionbridge
42. Xceed
43. Genpact
44. Mindcrest
45. WNS
46. hiSoft
47. Ci&T

This is a partial list. We will update the list as and when it is available with complete analysis. Until then, here is is the List of top 100 outsourcers for 2008.