e had discussed growth of our people in previous Newsletter. Another aspect of growth is being discussed in this section. Last few years have seen phenomenal growth in the areas of outsourcing services. Almost all of the aspiring multinationals have opted for outsourcing and many of them even considered off-shoring. Large numbers of these exercises have resulted in positive outcomes leading to success stories and spiraling effect. To meet this growing demand, supply side organizations have also geared themselves appropriately. Many of the traditional software and business process service providers have re-geared themselves and many new players also jumped in. Only the real differentiators managed to stay in business in this globally competitive game.

These “Stayers” can be segregated into two categories; (A) those big providers who were already in the game for a very long time (B) those who were new in the game but still manage to thrive due to a differentiating services they brought to the table. Both of these categories are very different in nature and can be distinguished rather easily by looking at certain traits:

Category (A) companies are very big to the point they don’t care about their clients as well as people anymore. For them, it is their brand name, which attracts clients as well as people to them. Once people join them, they get disfranchised and either leave them or consider switching. These bigger companies have typically less challenging, rather large and impersonal teams doing maintenance contracts for clients because that’s where these /uninventive/ service providers see easy money. Their strength is to provide services at very low cost because they don’t invest in their own employees.

As far as their clients are concerned they are aware of the fact that most boring tasks have been outsourced to these bigger and cheaper companies and are generally okay with the mediocre services they receive in return. Each person is considered no more than a body in these companies.

Before discussing the category (B) it is important to know that large number of smaller companies did not survive because they followed some of the traits of the bigger companies without having their advantages. Those who survived are very few but brought unique value propositions and strengths. They are very selective about hiring their people and provide narrow but in-depth set of services. They train their people in very organized way by considering individual skill sets as well as needs. They also have very selective set of clients and rather challenging projects. ebusinessware is one of such providers. We, at ebusinessware, can boast of a clientele that is among the world’s top financial institutions. We concentrate and hone our services very richly using the best hiring and training practices. It has helped ebusinessware come up the value chain in many ways.

We have always been able to lay our hands on best of the technologies and projects. We often get opportunity to work with clients in their entire business and application development life cycle.

It has helped our people acquire in-depth knowledge of not only the development or QA side of the application development but also the business strategy and requirements studies followed by architecting these global and state of the at applications using latest methodologies. No wonder, our people are known as domain specialists setting them apart from a typical offshore programmer. It has resulted in ebusinessware attracting external senior architects and developing internal people to an advanced level. Such architects are never attracted by the large category (A) companies for obvious reasons. As a result, the clients view all of the ebusinessware people coming to work with clients as professionals / bringing unique strengths. A direct benefit to both ebusinessware and our / professionals / is mutual loyalty and higher payout to both of them

- Sanjeev Midha President and Chief Technology Officer

Insight: A strategic Credit Risk reporting application that is gradually replacing outdated methodology of Simple Historical Averages with Historical Simulation and at the same time moving from a C/S platform (Powerbuilder/Sybase) to a web based (J2EE) one. We are helping CSFB with both the moves as well as doing bulk of the BAU work of integrating newer feeds/modifying interface for existing ones mostly over Powercenter - an ETL tool.

Risk Data Store: This data retrieval/collation & analysis application is gradually becoming sole supplier of data to MaRS. In the process, it is replacing a lot of tactical and ad hoc applications. Like Insight, the data feeds are interfaced into the system using Powercenter and then loaded by a java loader into the risk database after validating data - all exceptions are reported. The J2EE user interface allows such operations as viewing data by feed/book/node/cluster; exception handling, regressing data for a feed/book to previous day and validation/locking and approval of data at various levels.

Following Mr. Edward Hoofnagle’s visit to London and Singapore, India visit coincided with ebusinessware India office’s third anniversary celebrations. On this august occasion, Mr. Hoofnagle shared his vision for the company in the coming year. His well-articulated thoughts became a source of inspiration for the India team to strive to excel. His Annual Day speech became the launch pad for the new initiatives towards ebusinessware’s growth, globally.

During his visit to India, Edward outlined the concept behind the new initiative to be launched in ebusinessware -- “Innovation Program”. A 360 degrees Communication conference of all the Partners and onshore Project Leaders was held to brainstorm over the “Innovation Program”.

As conveyed by Mr. Hoofnagle, the ‘Innovation Programme’ is designed to facilitate our transformation towards exponential growth, in terms of effectively harnessing the company’s intrinsic strength, to capture the creative spirit of our team and drive innovation in our offerings.

The 360 Degree Communication Conference of all partners and onshore Project Leaders was held as the first forum to evaluate the goals and implementation plans for this programme.

As part of the Programme, ebusinessware teams around the world will be challenged to identify ideas for fostering innovation. An R&D team will be created to evaluate ideas and channel them into concrete Action Plans. Implementation teams will be created to address specific tasks and goals.

“Our objective is that partners will see value in this investment and commit to its success.”

On 2nd December 2004, ebusinessware India office completed its three years of operations in India. In the august presence of our CEO, Mr. Edward Hoofnagle, team in India observed ‘Annual Day’ on 9th December 2004, at Vatika Grand, Leisure Valley, Gurgaon.

We are also very happy that this time, we had Mr. Masood Khatri and Ms. Poonam Mepani from the onshore office, with us during the celebrations.

Lighting of ceremonial lamp by Mr. Hoofnagle, marked ‘Open’ the celebrations, followed by his paper on Yearly report on growth of ebusinessware – ‘The Best is yet to be’. He opened his speech by paying tribute to the job well done, and at the same time, sharing a vision of the good things to come. Read More

Talking on the yearly report on Global achievements for HR and Administration, Ms. Ashu Chadha said, “It is the people who make any organization a success. It’s the series of integrated decisions those form the core of employment relationships”. She emphasized on ‘Immigration’ as a matter of great pride and responsibility. Statistically speaking, she talked about 49 percent movements abroad, with 22 percent to US, 9 percent to UK and 8 percent to Singapore.

During his speech, Mr. Vivek Saxena reiterated that Systems administration and Infrastructure departments, forms the backbone for any technology driven organization. Talking further on department’s initiatives towards NMS, Security, Backups, CCTVs, ACS, IBMS etc., he concluded with “Don’t Worry, we are here”, as the slogan for ebusinessware’s Systems Administration and Infrastructure department.

Speaking on Technology milestones, Mr. Pankaj Gupta proudly stated last year as the year of scaling new heights and adding multiple new challenging projects for ebusinessware. “Though as all of us would agree, there is always a scope of improvement and we can never be relaxed in our commitment towards providing our best to our clients”, he said. “We are becoming better and better in our approach towards winning vast areas of projects”, he added.

A get-together

After the speakers had shared their yearly reports and thoughts for the year 2005, it was time for some cultural evens and fun frolic. Floor-wise cultural events were planned and each floor contributed their part in forms of skits, songs and dance. Special performances by Mr. Hoofnagle, Mr. Pankaj Gupta and Mr. Sudhir Dhingra, further added to the charm of the celebrations. Observing the growing restless in the team, the dance floor was thrown open. In the meantime, awards were distributed for the best performance of the evening, with Basement floor bagging the first prize for their foot-tapping Punjabi dance.

Employees

KNOWLEDGE EXCHANGE PROGRAMME

Mr. Sameer Randive, Executive Director – Business Development, underwent his induction programme, on HR and Sales in India. He is slated to initiate his operations for Singapore, looking for new business opportunities and taking care of MoM (Ministry of Manpower) Singapore.

Mr.Sumit Devgan, General Manager – Projects, underwent his training in US, on ‘Endeca’ tool, that offers innovative advanced search and Guided Navigation information delivery solutions for companies who need to integrate, discover, and navigate.

Mr.Shrikant Dixit, Director – SEPG, recently visited US to initiate and undertake the Data Modeling assignments for CITI-NOVA project. He held series of meetings with the technology team for the finalization of the overall project architecture.

ACCOLADES

The three IRIS team members - Shalabh, Sajjan and Hemant, who were on a six month training assignment in the UK, have returned to India. Each member, who received training in Component Support Architecture Framework, is all set to assume greater responsibilities. The technology platform for the training included Java EJB, JMX, and Swing etc.