HEADER: Novell to support global clients from India - CYBERMEDIA NEWS
LEADER: Onward Novell would handle global customer support, including customers from the US from India
Novell to support global clients from India
Iishwar Daas Nair
Salt Lake City,Utah
Despite the general backlash against outsourcing to India and other countries, US organizations still find value in farming out key business activities like software development, customer service management, technical support, product development and R&D, amongst others.
At BrainShare, Novell Inc's Chairman and CEO, Jack Messman announced the company's intention of continuing to leverage India and its capabilities in many areas. In an exclusive interview with CyberMedia News, Jack reveals, " A few months ago, we had an India Day back here at our headquarters specifically to look at India and the opportunities it can offer".
To start with, beginning May 2004, Onward Novell, a 50:50 joint venture with Onward Network Technologies and Novell Inc would handle global customer support to include customer from the US as well. Hitherto, Onward Novell has been rendering this service for APac clients.
This would now be enhanced to handle a larger share of the global technical support activity for Novell and its customers. A team of technical specialists from Onward Novell are currently being trained in the US to handle customers in the region.
Novell already has invested in a R&D and product development center in India, based at Bangalore, since 1994. The center has over 350 engineers handling leading-edge product development for the NetWare family. Post the acquisition of SUSE and
Ximian, some of the new developments in the open-source and Linux area would also happen out of Bangalore.
The other area in which India would be leveraged is the outsourcing of consulting and solutions development for global clients, Jack reveals. However, the plans are yet to be finalized.
- CyberMedia News