Australian coffee manufacturer, FreshFood signed a pact with global enterprise software vendor, Ramco Systems to replace its legacy system with a mobile-based postmodern ERP. Ramco’s partner, Megasoft played a vital role in this engagement.Share of Ramco System has seen a 14 per cent jump immediately after the contract has been signed, BSE reported.John Elliott, Business Director – ANZ, FreshFood Management Services Pty. Ltd., said, “Having expanded into multiple facets including manufacturing, trading, marketing, field force integration and distributing coffee in all its forms, we needed a technology partner who can integrate our businesses and power its future growth. In Ramco, we found a platform which is comprehensive and scalable to meet both our current and future business needs.”FreshFood will be implementing a comprehensive ERP suite including finance, supply chain, production, maintenance, sales and shipping, and CRM. Also, it has plans to implement Equipment Rental Management software from Ramco to manage and keep track of large number of coffee machines – rented/leased to business partners.Ramco's end-to-end solution will streamline FreshFood's business functions, and will enable a seamless flow of information, provide much needed process integration, resulting in improved speed of business.Ken Kwek, Finance Head, FreshFood Management Services Pty. Ltd., added, “Ramco ERP will help us reset our processes with best practices, which will then lead to improved efficiency and better operational insights. It will help us move towards dashboards and role-based workspaces, adoption of mobility, flexible advanced reporting, and vastly improved management by exception in real time. We are delighted to begin this journey with Ramco and Megasoft.”Ramco ERP on Cloud as a post-modern and single integrated ERP platform has been delivering significant innovation, cost savings, and superior business processes to organizations, globally. Ramco’s focus on innovations in usability, context-awareness, mobility, overall flexibility, apart from comprehensive set of functionality has enabled smooth transitions possible for customers. Virender Aggarwal, CEO, Ramco Systems, said, "As a relatively new vendor in the market, we beat global brands and are replacing a well-established legacy vendor at FreshFood. With Cloud and postmodern ERP gaining traction, there is a good market opportunity opening up for replacement of legacy systems.”
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Facebook has just launched its 2G-friendly app on Android. The social giant says demand for the app is strong in India and many have downloaded through workarounds even before it’s been available officially on the Play Store. Facebook Lite’s Vijay Shankar talks about how Lite is different from regular and Facebook’s plans for the app.
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Atos, digital services company, has completed the acquisition of Xerox's ITO (Information Technology Outsourcing) business. The net purchase is priced $ 966 million (€ 811 million), composed of $950 million and an additional amount of $50 million following the occurrence of certain events prior to closing, plus $100 million representing the estimated present value of future tax benefits to Atos.Net debt items and closing adjustments amounted to $ 134 million to be confirmed within 90 days.Since the announcement of the acquisition in December 2014, Atos and Xerox ITO teams have worked together to ensure operational readiness on the first day after closing. As a result, Atos now has the ability to offer its European and US clients the necessary presence to better support their digital transformation needs anywhere in the world. Atos will leverage the Xerox ITO customer centric approach and Atos’ industrial capacities and portfolio of cutting-edge services and technologies, particularly in Cloud, Big Data, Cyber-security, and in High Power Computing to support clients handle the massive volumes of data generated in the digital world.Thierry Breton, Chairman and CEO, said, “Today marks a major step in the development of the Atos Group, as we welcome 9,600 Xerox ITO employees to Atos. With the US now our largest market, we have a stronger and more balanced global presence, which combined with our digital skills, allows us to be the trusted partner for our clients’ digital journey anywhere in the world.”The net purchase price totaled $966 million (€ 811 million), composed of $950 million and an additional amount of US$ 50 million following the occurrence of certain events prior to closing, plus $100 million representing the estimated present value of future tax benefits to Atos. Net debt items and closing adjustments amounted to $134 million to be confirmed within 90 days.With circa $2 billion revenue, North America becomes the largest geography for Atos where it is now ranked number 9 in ITO services.Atos today enters into a worldwide strategic collaboration with Xerox – a global business services, technology, and document management company – and becomes one of Xerox’s primary IT services providers.Michel-Alain Proch, Group SEVP, who has been appointed CEO for North America operations added: “Together with Xerox teams, we have worked extensively to be ready from day one post-closing and we are now fully operational to ensure continued delivery of services to our clients while at the same time leveraging the combined strengths of the two groups for profitable growth.”
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Bengaluru-based IT infrastructure services company NxtGen Datacentre & Cloud Technologies has raised $13.5 million from International Finance Corporation (IFC), as part of series B funding for expansion activity.The financing will be used to complete a data centre project in Bengaluru and increase further investments into cloud infrastructure.A. S. Rajgopal, CEO, NxtGen, said, "This second round of funding, will enable us to further strengthen our growth plans in India and initiate our international strategy".NxtGen which provides cloud services and IT infrastructure service, has two data centres in India - in Mumbai and Bengaluru - and has offices in four major metros Bengaluru, Mumbai, Chennai, and Delhi. It has 105 employees and 200+ channel partners taking its services to market. And will expand it services across the globe such as Abu Dhabi and Sri Lanka.The Telecom, Media & Technology (TMT) group at IFC focuses its investments on mobile, broadband, and infrastructure sharing. Independent datacenters fit well into IFC's strategy as they are an integral critical component of the telecom infrastructure, and allow for the evolution of an IT ecosystem in local economies. IFC's TMT group has invested in five other datacenter companies in emerging markets - GDS/EDC-China, Teraco-South Africa, iXcellerate-Russia, DeNovo-Ukraine and Zenium-Turkey.Atul Mehta, IFC Director for Telecom, Media, and Technology, Venture Capitals and Funds, said, "Affordable and effective IT infrastructure colocation and cloud computing services are increasingly important for digital inclusion and economic development. Built to top industry standards, NxtGen's data centers will support India's growing need for data consumption, incur capital savings for businesses, and boost direct and indirect job creation."
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India software market registered a stable year-on-year growth of 10.0 per cent on India Software Tracker for 2H 2014, revealed International Data Corporation (IDC).However, the market is expected to gain a steady momentum starting 2016 and beyond as deals would have closures and implementation would start. Some of the reasons for the stable growth include a steady double digit growth for the top vendors such as SAP, Microsoft, Oracle, IBM and Synopsys cornering more than 60 per cent of the total share. More investments are expected to pour in from sectors such as government, manufacturing and retail among others.“Some of the larger software vendors restructured their organisation in line with the emerging technologies and re-aligned their strategies to capture the mindshare in the growth markets such as SMB, cloud, analytics and mobility. This has worked quite well for them and they have managed to grow inspite of the uncertainty in the market," says Shweta Baidya, Senior Market Analyst, Software, IDC India.The Indian IT Software market is segregated into three primary markets which include Application Development Deployment (AD&D), Applications and System Infrastructure Software (SIS). The total AD&D market grew by 9.5 per cent year on year while applications market pegged a growth of 10.8 per cent year-on-year and SIS market grew by 8.5 per cent yyear-on-year during the second half of calendar year 2014.Some of the major transformational projects kick-started by the Government, including Digital India, Make in India, Pradhan Mantri Jan-Dhan Yojana etc. have already pushed the adoption in other sectors too. Further, Small & Medium Enterprises (SME) segment is the new sweet spot for most of the vendors who are trying to push their Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) offerings among SMEs through their various partnerships.IDC expects the software market to grow at a healthy pace in the next five years (2015-2019) with a CAGR of 10.6 per cent. Some of the software categories that will trigger the uptake include mobile applications, in-memory analytics, database security and privacy, open source applications, DLP, encryption, application security among others.Operating System (OS) upgrades by customers along with bundled Office offerings and Office 365 uptake contributed to Microsoft growth during the review period. Oracle gained steady foothold across verticals which adopted cloud solutions to manage their workforce, and integrate their CRM applications with ERP to get a holistic view of their customers. SAP registered a robust growth owing to migration of its existing customers to SAP Cloud powered by its in-memory platform, SAP HANAManufacturing, Banking, Finance, Securities and Investment Services (BFSI), IT/ITeS and Communication & Media were the top verticals which invested in next generation solutions to gain a competitive edge in the market. Some other sectors that have shown strong inclination towards IT adoption includes retail, government, entertainment and hospitality sector.The Union Government has a clear focus on leveraging technology for transformational projects and help improve infrastructure, build smart cities, address urbanization, revive manufacturing sector among others.Manufacturing companies are making an effort to integrate social media platform with the back end systems to implement feedback during the production stage itself and enhance customer offerings. Telematics and Robotics are some of the other areas where the Manufacturing sector is beginning to display interest and discussions have started with the vendors for long term gains.Use of big data analytics in the retail industry has helped companies to track information generated across multiple platforms such as CRM, Supply Chain Systems, Sensor Data, e-mails, Adsense Analytics and the likes to identify the latest trends and buyer sentiments and re-align their inventory levels accordingly.
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