Stories about: Cognizant Technology Solutions

US corporate IT spending will plummet 10 to 20 percent in 2009, according to the latest projections from Citi Investment Research, which is reporting a "rapid deterioration" of CIO budgets in recent weeks.

Indian outsourcer Wipro is to develop open-source business software and offer system integration services around the open-source database from software vendor Ingres, which will be marketed jointly by the two companies.

Ingres Monday announced a global sales and marketing alliance with leading Indian consultancy and IT services company Satyam Computer Services to attract more customers for its open-source database.

Schwan Food, a privately held firm that's the fifth-largest food supplier in the U.S., said this week that it has completed a project to move from a mainframe-based system running Cobol applications to a Microsoft .Net environment.

First-time offshoring customers often encounter a rash of unexpected difficulties, such as lower-than- anticipated cost savings and the need to send IT managers overseas for extended periods to resolve project problems. So serious are these issues that more than half of customers end outsourcing contracts prematurely, according to a recent survey.

The lure of cheap rates for offshore code-cutters may see some companies eyeing the big savings potential of their next big software project, but the real costs are much more complex and not so easy to identify. In the behind the scenes lead up to such decisions, customers spend big bucks on vendor evaluation, managing the contract, enhancing security, travelling to offshore sites and face the liklihood of paying out hefty severance packages for laid-off employees. Sandra Rossi reports

Cognizant Technology Solutions, a provider of offshore outsourcing services, plans to increase its presence in India next year by building new facilities and to grow its global headcount by over 40 percent, the company announced Monday.

Shape the process for managing an offshore IT operation into a pyramid, and at the top are personal visits. Directly below that are videoconferences, followed by telephone calls, e-mail, instant messaging and distributed software development tools. At the bottom are daily, weekly and monthly reports.

Since it first opened its doors in 1920, Oxford Bookstore, a small bookshop in the heart of Calcutta's business district, has been a favorite destination for book lovers. And while the store had always done a brisk business, for 80 years patrons were able to find their literary treasures only at its sole location in India.

Information Builders Inc. is allying with custom software provider Cognizant Technology Solutions Corp. to offer customers tools and services that will allow them to transfer companies from legacy reporting environments to the Web.

When Wall Street analysts evaluate whether a publicly traded consulting company is a good investment, they look for something information technology shops would rather not see: fees that are high and going higher.