Thursday, September 20, 2012

Tata Consultancy Services Limited Inaugurates New Center in Minneapolis

TCS announces the official opening of the TCS Solutions Center - Minneapolis in Bloomington, Minnesota. The inauguration of TCS' newest facility was celebrated with a ribbon-cutting event on September 14, 2012.

Tata Consultancy Services (BSE: 532540, NSE: TCS), the leading IT services, consulting and business solutions organization, today, announced the official opening of the TCS Solutions Center - Minneapolis in Bloomington, Minnesota. The inauguration of TCS' newest facility was celebrated with a ribbon-cutting event on September 14, 2012.

Located in the Normandale Lake Office Park, the 50,000 square foot facility will be home to roughly 300 TCS employees. The center will serve as a hub for delivering technology services to customers in the region and is an integral part of TCS' Global Network Delivery Model™ (GNDM™), which provides a quality of service and certainty of outcome that TCS' customers have come to rely on.

"The decision to open a new TCS facility in the Minneapolis region is part of our company's on-going commitment to grow our presence in each and every market we serve," said N Chandrasekaran, TCS' Chief Executive Officer and Managing Director. "Over the past few years, Minnesota has put an emphasis on technological innovation that aligns with TCS' breadth of industry expertise, innovative engineering strength and commitment to providing cutting-edge solutions, and will only enhance the scope and scale of our customer offerings in North America."

RSA and Booz Allen Hamilton Join Forces to Help Government and Commercial Organizations Get the Upper Hand Against Advanced Cyber Threats

RSA, The Security Division of EMC, and Booz Allen Hamilton Inc. have announced a consulting and services partnership that is designed to provide enhanced offerings and make it easier for commercial and public sector customers to use the information security expertise and specialized technologies from both cyber security leaders.

The consulting and services partnership, announced today to industry and government leaders at RSA's second Advanced Threats Summit in Washington, DC, will have three initial objectives: 1) to develop joint information security service offerings; 2) simplify client engagements for security preparedness and incident response; and 3) further assessing the commercialization of advanced security technologies from Booz Allen Hamilton that play a crucial role in detecting and defeating today's sophisticated computer attacks.

The collaboration leverages RSA's decades of experience in developing computer security software used by tens of thousands of customers worldwide as well as Booz Allen Hamilton's depth of expertise in designing and managing security operations and cyber analytics for some of the world's most sensitive government and commercial entities.

Tuesday, September 11, 2012

Towers Watson Launches Crisis Management Team With Two Senior Hires

Global professional services company Towers Watson (NYSE, NASDAQ: TW) has entered the crisis management market with the appointments of Christof Bentele and Chris Holt. The two industry veterans will lead Towers Watson’s new Crisis Management team, designed to help clients manage their risk exposure to unforeseen crises and to deliver response solutions if events do occur.

The Towers Watson Crisis Management team will specialize in terrorism, kidnap, ransom & extortion, product recall, and hostile environment risks. The company plans to build the team over the next 12 months. In addition, Towers Watson will leverage its insurance brokerage services by offering a combination of both crisis management consulting and insurance brokerage, which will create a more holistic risk management offering for its clients.

Infosys to Acquire Lodestone, a Leading Management Consultancy Firm

Infosys, a global leader in consulting and technology, has announced a definitive agreement to acquire Lodestone Holding AG, a leading global management consultancy firm for an aggregate enterprise value of CHF 330 Million in cash. Headquartered in Zurich, Lodestone advises international companies on strategy and process optimization, and provides business transformation solutions enabled by SAP. The combination of the breadth of capabilities delivered by Infosys and Lodestone's deep experience of driving transformational change, is expected to provide clients across the two companies, a world-class team to accelerate transformation and innovation led growth.

Upon completion, the acquisition of Lodestone will strengthen Infosys Consulting and Systems Integration (C&SI) capabilities, by bringing more than 850 employees, including 750 experienced SAP consultants to the company. Lodestone will add more than 200 clients across industries including Manufacturing, Automotive and Life Sciences, to the Infosys pool of over 700 clients. Post-acquisition, the combined Consulting practice focusing on SAP programs will deliver revenues of more than $1 Billion, firmly establishing Infosys amongst the global leaders in SAP consulting.

Capgemini Announces Extension of Global Alliance with Salesforce.com

Capgemini, one of the world’s foremost providers of consulting, technology and outsourcing services has announced that it is expanding its alliance with leading enterprise cloud computing company salesforce.com, through a joint fast growth initiative. While Capgemini has been implementing Salesforce solutions since 2007, this agreement signals a global approach with dedicated leadership and mutual investment in a joint go-to-market strategy to drive successful customer experiences in the cloud. The aim of the initiative will be to grow revenue over the next two years and aid the rising number of organizations seeking to transform their businesses into social enterprises*. The partnership is global in scope with focus on initial core markets including: France, Netherlands, the Nordic countries, North America and the United Kingdom.

In a more social, mobile and connected world, companies increasingly face pressure from customers, employees and competitors to integrate and leverage the power of the social Web. The cloud has set new benchmarks for how quick, flexible, cost-effective and scalable solutions should be available to organizations. Through the agreement, Capgemini and salesforce.com will work together to help organizations unlock the benefits of cloud and strategically transform into social enterprises, using an integrated step-by-step approach that helps organizations re-envision customer experience, operational processes and business models.

For example, Capgemini has recently launched CustomerConnect Retail - a Capgemini solution, built on the Salesforce Platform to help retailers better understand their customers. It works by drawing data from multiple customer touch points to create a single view and provide a more personalized, customer-centric service in real-time. The solution uses agile techniques and a cloud computing model that is scalable to deliver an improved customer experience across multiple channels, whether in-store, online or via social media.

Young Adults in Thailand and Indonesia get an Additional US$3.65 Million from Accenture

Big4.com, the premier social networking forum for professionals and alumni of Accenture, Andersen, BearingPoint, Capgemini, Deloitte, Ernst & Young, KPMG and PricewaterhouseCoopers PwC reports that Accenture and Plan International have awarded Plan International an additional grant of US$3.65 million. Big4.com reports the money is to be used to help provide approximately 7,100 disadvantaged young adults in Thailand and Indonesia with the technical, vocational and entrepreneurial skills necessary to find employment or build a business. This grant will help Plan International increase its ability to provide highly marginalized young people with vocational and entrepreneurship training as well as the job placement support necessary to find employment.

Big4.com also reports that this money is part of Accenture’s global corporate citizenship initiative, Skills to Succeed, which will equip 250,000 people around the world by 2015 with the skills to get a job or build a business.

Thursday, September 6, 2012

Censeo Named Top Ten in The Vault Consulting 50 "The Best Consulting Firms to Work For" Ranking

Censeo Consulting Group, a leader in operations and supply chain consulting, announced today that it has ranked tenth in The Vault Consulting 50 Ranking for 2013, a ranking of the nation's top consulting firms to work for from Vault.com, a well-recognized career resource.

Censeo earned top three rankings in the following areas: work/life balance, hours in the office, hiring process, firm culture, employee satisfaction, diversity for minorities, and supervisor relationships.

As part of Vault's annual Management and Strategy Consulting Survey, conducted from March through July, more than 5,000 consultants of all levels responded and ranked their own firm's quality of life. The Vault Consulting 50 ranking was compiled using a weighted formula that reflects the issues such as firm's prestige, satisfaction, culture, compensation, work life balance, overall business outlook and promotion policies. The survey is only open to consultants who are currently employed at reputable firms in the industry. When rating quality of life issues, consultants were only permitted to rate their own firm. For prestige and practice area rankings, however, consultants were only allowed to rate competitors, and not their own firms.