Brazil-IT

September 05, 2007

Will Low-Cost Laptops Help Kids in Developing Countries?

Wall Street Journal
September 5, 2007

The nonprofit organization One Laptop Per Child is working to develop computers that could be built for just $100 each and distributed to children in developing countries.

So far the organization has won the backing of some major technology companies as well as the United Nations. Intel Corp., which initially had its own low-cost PC design, decided to join the effort in July. The OLPC expects to begin mass producing its laptops, which are designed to be used outdoors and can be powered with a pull cord, later this year.

Still, some of the program's critics, which have included Dell Inc. Chief Executive Michael Dell, argue that the OLPC machine's computing power is insufficient, and that the laptops won't be very useful without necessary supporting infrastructure. (Read a Wall Street Journal story4 about one entrepreneur's difficulty trying to wire Rwanda.)

The Wall Street Journal Online invited Walter Bender, president of the One Laptop effort and former director of MIT's Media Lab, to discuss the program with eMachines co-founder Stephen Dukker, whose start-up company sells technology for low-cost computer labs. Below is their exchange, carried out over email.
(The chairman of the One Laptop effort is Nicholas Negroponte, who has also been named to a panel5 formed to protect the editorial integrity of Wall Street Journal publisher Dow Jones and Co. News Corp., which has agreed to buy Dow Jones, has contributed funding to OLPC.)
Stephen Dukker begins: Helping the developing world cross the Digital Divide is a fundamental act of decency, generosity and even self-interest for the developed world.

Unfortunately, the OLPC's approach will not succeed because it runs counter to a fundamental fact of life: Computers cannot exist independent of basic economic realities. Any delivery, service and support model that doesn't create profit will be unsustainable.

THE PARTICIPANTS

Walter Bender is president of One Laptop Per Child6, a Cambridge, Mass.-based nonprofit group. Mr. Bender is on leave from MIT, where he was executive director of the university's Media Lab7, a technology research institute he helped found with Nicholas Negroponte.

Stephen Dukker is chairman and CEO of NComputing8 Inc., a Redwood City, Calif., start-up that develops technology to allow one computer to support multiple users. He was a founder and former CEO of eMachines Inc., a low-cost computer manufacturer acquired by Gateway Inc. in 2005. Mr. Dukker has also held executive roles at Computer City and CompUSA Inc.

The price of base-level PCs has been stuck at about $400 for years. As a result, there are still one billion potential users who cannot afford them. The OLPC project is targeting a $100 computer, but has struggled to break $200. But given economic realities, even $200 computers cannot generate the profit essential to create a robust IT ecosystem, required for continuing operation.

A PC must communicate, which mandates connectivity. That in turn demands configuration, maintenance, professional services, technical support, and software and hardware upgrades. When was the last time a totally new laptop platform launched without a flood of patches, upgrades and repairs for the first few years of deployment? How will this be managed and deployed?

One also must ask whether OLPC's low-cost laptops, with their PDA-sized seven-inch screens and low-performance processors, will actually meet the needs of users. For PCs to be productive, whether in the developing or the developed world, they require both a host of supporting services and reasonable features and capabilities.

Here in the developed world, the PC hardware industry has lived with nearly profitless computing for years... It's asking too much to believe an industry with no profits could be sustained in the developing world. We need something completely different, something that can change the basic economics of PC computing. I believe the answer to this problem will be technological, not charitable.

Walter Bender responds: I am pleased to hear that you resonate with the OLPC mission to help children in the developing world. However, to characterize our effort as an attempt to bridge the Digital Divide is somewhat off target. Our premise is that most children in the developing world lack the opportunity for a decent education. Our mission is to provide them with that opportunity because we think that learning is a critical factor is addressing many -- if not all -- of the problems that they face. We happen to think that the most efficient way to reach children and give them opportunity is to provide them with connected laptop computers.

I am somewhat confused when you refer to the OLPC approach as running counter to basic economic realities. While OLPC itself is a nonprofit, none of our suppliers, distributors, etc. are nonprofit. We are not asking anyone -- except for governments -- to provide laptops or services for free...

What is the basis of your assertion that OLPC is struggling to break $200? Further, what is the basis of your assertion that a $200 computer cannot generate the profit essential to create a robust IT ecosystem?

I agree with you that "a PC must communicate, which mandates connectivity." Our mesh network provides zero-configuration, free, high-bandwidth communication within the local community without the need for any additional infrastructure. Further, it allows for laptops to share any existing back-haul bandwidth; thus we gain an efficiency of scale…

In regard to hardware support, we have taken extraordinary measures to build a robust laptop -- much more robust that than the typical $1,000 machine: It has no hard disk to break; no internal moving parts; no fan; it is water and dust resistant; tolerates operation at 50C+ in high humidity; it survives a drop test at roughly three times the industry standard; etc. Further, it is designed to be field serviceable: A nine-year old can replace the motherboard with just a screwdriver.

In regard to software support, of course we will be issuing upgrades and patches, as is typical throughout the industry…
I agree with you that the way to achieve our goals is through technological advances. There are two ways to build an inexpensive laptop: One is to use cheap parts and cut corners; the other is to rethink the design from the ground up and use the highest technology. We have taken the latter approach and have build a first-class machine.

Mr. Dukker: It seems like OLPC and NComputing have a common mission of helping the developing world's children rise out of poverty and other social problems through computer-assisted education. We just have different approaches to delivering that computing experience.
When a developing country has to spend $175 (latest OLPC pricing) and commit to unknown costs of managing a laptop, it is reallocating money away from other critical programs such as fighting hunger and providing basic medical care for its citizens.

Instead of spending $175 per child, our model offers an $11 per child solution that leverages existing infrastructure and ecosystems. The NComputing solution essentially taps the unused power of a regular desktop PC and enables seven students to use it simultaneously. So a school with 300 students can outfit a 30 seat computer lab with a few desktop PCs and NComputing access terminals for less than $5,000. Compare that with an OLPC deployment that would cost over $50,000 ($175 x 300 students). Perhaps this simple calculation is a key reason developing countries like India are declining the OLPC model for a more cost-effective model.

Kudos to the OLPC project for generating tremendous press over the last few years for the "$100 laptop" but to quote the old lady in the Wendy's ad, "Where's the beef?" Last accounts show an initial price of $175 with three million unit volumes required to bring prices down. And how many actual OLPC laptops have been deployed in the past three years?

But since the hardware is just a delivery mechanism, is it safe to assume that you would support our efforts to load the software onto standard Windows or Linux PCs and multiply the power of the PCs with our access terminals? Considering the fact that we can deliver our solution at 1/10th the cost of the OLPC laptop, and include a healthy profit margin for a delivery and support chain, we would together not only improve education, but kick start entrepreneurs around the globe.
Mr. Bender: Your choice of words describing our missions is interesting: "computer-assisted education." At OLPC, we'd say: "computer-enabled learning." Let me make an analogy to immunology that Antonio Battro first brought to my attention: A vaccine is not a cure; it is an agent that enables your body to manufacture a cure. Likewise, computing is not a cure; it is an agent that will enable children to engage in learning.

It is not clear from your description what existing resources NComputing is able to leverage that OLPC cannot. Perhaps you could explain.

The computer-lab approach, which is well established, is also well-known to be relatively unimpactful. Another colleague, David Cavallo, who has spent many years doing projects in the developing world, has a telling story from Curitiba, Brazil. The schools there had computer labs; the average amount of computing time per child was approximately 15 minutes per week. It is not clear what one can learn beyond rudimentary IT skills with such limited access. Certainly one cannot harness the power of computation as an expressive medium -- a thing to think with -- unless you have more regular access. When David approached the headmaster of the school, suggesting that he reallocate the time that the children spend in the lab -- six weeks of intensive computing time once per year, sufficient time to have a meaningful engagement -- the response was no. The reason given was that the children only come to school on "computer day."

The OLPC approach is one of saturation: The children have access to computing 24-7. Even if they don't have more than two to three hours per day in school -- typical in the developing world -- they have ample time to explore, express, and communicate outside of school. Further, a laptop program touches the whole family: siblings, parents, grandparents, etc. The community impact is enormous.

Regarding virtual terminals, it is not clear to me that you can build a virtual terminal system for a lesser cost than you could one of our laptops. Plus you lose the ability to run untethered, greatly limiting reach.

In regard to your question: "How many actual OLPC laptops have been deployed in the past 3 years?" the answer is none. We only start mass production this fall. However, we have approximately 7,000 prototype laptops in the field, in schools in Cambodia, Thailand, Rwanda, Ethiopia, Nigeria, Brazil, Uruguay, Peru, and the U.S….

I laud the fact that there is enterprise around NComputing. There is no reason not to expect that OLPC will not also impart a spirit of entrepreneurship where ever it is deployed -- indeed, our insistence on open source and open standards and that the laptops be circulated throughout the community as part of local capacity building has and will have a catalytic affect on local economies.

Mr. Dukker: I see your point on the subtlety between "education" and "learning" and defer to your organization's deep knowledge and experience in the learning marketplace over the past 45 years… Rather than debate the ways schools teach or children learn, we try to address the tools they need to accomplish the objective. Having deployed the solution in over 70 countries though, we have learned that a single model does not work. Each country, each state, each school and each teacher will have a different way to accomplish computer-enabled learning. A monolithic model simply won't work.

You believe that student lab environments are ineffective. Most of the educational world (including the developed world) would disagree. Even in the U.S., with the highest educational spending per pupil, only a handful of states have run limited pilots with laptops. Doesn't it make sense, as a first step, rather than use the developing world's scarce economic resources to distribute immediately obsolescing, unproven technology into the harshest environments in the world, that we rather support the creation of "connected" local, public computer/Internet and resource centers?

Another concern is the ability of centralized governments to deploy and manage 250,000 laptop deployments at a time (minimum order quantity for OLPC). There are very few organizations (much less central governments) that have that kind of planning, architecting, deployment, and management capability. Heck, even large global enterprises have a difficult time deploying 10,000 laptops. This gets back to a core ecosystem issue: unless there is a private-sector based ecosystem, deployment and maintenance becomes a nightmare…

Our belief is that a user needs access to what a computer does, not an actual computer. One CPU per user has a limited future. You could easily reduce the chip count and cost of the [machine] (and actually get it below $100) by partnering with us to build a model that shares the extra power of PCs.

OLPC's key development in our view is the software -- who cares about the hardware as long as it gets the job done inexpensively? We think that our hardware model, which did not exist when you started your project, coupled with your software creates the ideal solution.
Mr. Bender: You wrote: "Rather than debate the ways schools teach or children learn…" If the goal is children learning, then to shy away from the debate of how children learn most effectively and simply focus on technology deployment seems rather odd.

"A monolithic model simply won't work…" Agreed. Therefore, we are advocating something much more fluid than a thin-client model tied down to a computer lab. What could be less monolithic than giving every child and teacher a laptop from which to configure his or her learning experience?

"You believe that student lab environments are ineffective." It is better than nothing, but it is far from optimal. Just the point I made earlier about duty-cycle: 15 minutes per week vs. 24/7. Access just at school vs. access at school and home. Access for the student vs. access for the family. And the types of learning one can engage in with a lab environment is also restrictive. If the lab were the optimal solution, why have we all migrated to laptops?...

"Another concern is the ability of centralized governments to deploy and manage 250,000 laptop deployments at a time…" First of all, the large minimum orders are a launch condition, not a steady-state requirement. It is necessary to get large numbers to prime the supply chain. Also, even where countries are ordering these quantities, they are not all arriving at once. They are spread out over a year, on a ramp, so that the logistics can be worked out incrementally. We also have a number of partnership with organizations that specialize in logistics, including the United National Development Programme and private-sector partners, to help the governments with the deployment. These organizations know how to work at scale and how to reach remote locations.

I don't know how you build a virtual terminal for $11 that has a display that is suitable for reading, but if you can, I'd love to incorporate some of your technology into the laptop. But there are other considerations as well. For example, does you system run off of the power grid (e.g., can it exploit solar or human power)? If not, how do those children who live off the grid use it?

Mr. Dukker: I understand and respect your zeal for the OLPC mission... Yet, I do not believe we should confuse our mission with any particular product. It's the end result that counts.

Technology has advanced since Nicholas Negroponte first presented the idea of the $100 laptop at the World Economic Forum in January of 2003. Today, there is simply a better way to rapidly and realistically extend the value of computing to school children and others in the developing world. We have no doubt that if our technology were available back then, it would have made sense to incorporate it. This is the risk of technology: Decisions correct today may not be in three to five years. That is a fact…

Multi-user PC access technology, such as NComputing offers, is changing the economics of our industry and will be fundamental in meeting the needs of the next billion computer users around the world in a cost-effective energy-efficient manner.

Our terminal access devices cost only about $11 (without monitor) per seat to manufacture and therefore do not require a charitable model to reach the marketplace. In fact, we now have distributors and resellers who are profitably selling, deploying and supporting our solutions into schools and business in 70 countries around the world -- stimulating the creation of the necessary commercial IT provider infrastructure essential to enable these users. The initial cost savings, however, is only the beginning. Upgrading our systems requires only the replacement of the host PCs, not the terminal devices themselves. Meanwhile, because of the tremendous energy efficiency of our systems, they can be deployed in areas and schools where power is a precious commodity. These savings can then be redirected to meet other important needs within developing countries -- for example, the development of a communication infrastructure that is so critical to realizing the full value of computing.

I fully respect the efforts of OLPC. I only hope that you will look to new technologies, such as our own, that can help your organization and our industry realistically and much more rapidly reach the laudable goals you have so eloquently articulated…

Mr. Bender concludes: There are roughly one billion school-aged children in the developing world. It will take many combined efforts to reach them and give them the opportunity for learning that they deserve.

"I do not believe we should confuse our mission with any particular product." Product no; but that doesn't mean we should be agnostic about technology or about its impact on learning. There are constraints in the developing world that demand our attention; further, the status quo is failing, so incrementalism is the riskiest course of action.

When I was a child we had educational technology: the mimeograph machine. We referred to it as the Purple Plague. Uninterested teachers used it literally to "crank out" worksheets. But it didn't enhance learning.

I am certain that you can manufacture a low-cost thin-client device; I am equally certain that you can use it to deliver instructional material. And furthermore, I am sure that it is an easy, low-risk sales proposition. But meeting customer demands is not necessarily congruent with meeting the needs of children. Providing electronic access to content is undoubtedly more efficient than delivering printed materials. But how does it change the lives of children and their families? Is it the new mimeograph machine?...

Children need to learn learning, which is primarily acquired through the passion that comes from access, the ability to make things, to communicate and to express. Writing a computer program, while seemingly esoteric, is in fact the closest a child can come to thinking about thinking. Likewise, debugging a program is the closest one can come to learning.

It goes without saying that Internet access and tools for expression (text, music, video, graphics) are the contemporary "toys" for learning. Every child of any means in the developed world has access to a computer at home and usually his or her own, with music, DVD, plus interactive and rich media to do anything from learning languages to play games.

The world can afford to make these same resources available for every child.

Posted by ana at 11:33 AM

July 23, 2007

Brazil Sambas onto Offshore Outsourcing Stage

CIO Magazine
By Stephanie Overby
July, 2007

Offshore outsourcing managers used to traveling back and forth to Bangalore may be trading in those frequent flier miles for tickets to São Paulo or Rio. And not for any much-needed R&R.

Some IT organizations experienced in offshoring are looking to Brazil as an emerging option for software development and maintenance services. In most cases, the move is part of a diversification strategy as demand continues to put upward pressure on wages in India.

In addition, some companies may be looking for a way to bring offshore work a bit closer to home in the Western hemisphere. “There are instances where [Brazil] is used instead of India because of its closer proximity and similar time zones to the U.S.,” says Eugene M. Kublanov, COO and managing director for offshoring outsourcing advisor NeoIT.

Brazilian IT services companies are eager for the international business. The domestic market for IT work is growing at a decent 17 percent a year, according to Jair Ribeiro, president of São Paulo–based CPM Braxis, Brazil’s largest IT services company with $500 million in annual revenue. But CPM Braxis and other local market leaders, such as Brasilia-based Politec and Rio de Janeiro–based DBA, are ravenous for a piece of the offshore outsourcing market, which is growing at more than twice that rate.

These companies are contending with some much larger competitors. Most multinational outsourcers, including IBM, EDS, HP, Unisys and Accenture, have set up shop in Brazil. IBM, for example, is using Brazil as a hub for infrastructure management, employing more than 9,000 people in Campinas, 90 minutes outside of São Paolo, says Kublanov. Tier-1 Indian players, including TCS, Satyam, Infosys and Wipro, and larger Mexican IT services companies including Neoris and Softek, have moved in as well.

Financial services key client for Brazil
The biggest market for companies like CPM Braxis is the financial services industry, thanks to that company’s experience building robust software to cope with the country’s financial crises in the 1980s and '90s. Financial services business makes up half of the revenues at CPM Braxis.

The second major source of revenues is ERP work. Brazil boasts one of the largest concentrations of SAP consultants in the world outside of Germany. Due to a large population of German descent, SAP has been operating in Brazil for years, and local corporations and divisions of multinationals have aggressively installed the ERP systems, says Kublanov. To be fair, Ribeiro says he also does a decent amount of Oracle business. Experience in Cobol and other legacy languages are also one of CPM Braxis’s selling points.

Companies who have outsourced IT work to Brazil include JPMorgan, Estee Lauder, and offshore first-moved General Electric. Some companies, including Citigroup, Motorola, Dell and Oracle, have set up captive (company-owned and operated) development centers.

Unlike some of its global competition, there is no real business process outsourcing, or BPO, business for Brazil. “English skills are available from a well-educated subset of the population,” says Kublanov. “[There] is far less than in countries such as Eastern Europe, giving Brazil limited capacity to jump deeply into the businesses such as call centers.” The best English speakers go to work for multinationals, Kublanov adds.

More growth predicted
Some analysts predict growth in Brazil’s IT services sector, currently valued at $1.1 billion by Frost & Sullivan and predicted to triple by 2012. But not everything is working in Brazil’s favor. “Brazil is an anomaly in the global market,” says Kublanov. On one hand, there’s great potential to service the United States and European market due to location and cultural affinity. On the other hand, employee costs are high and personal security concerns plaguing São Paolo and Rio de Janeiro make it a challenging work environment, says Kublanov. As one of the strongest economies in Latin America, Brazil’s own companies are now a target market for other countries like India providing cheaper offshore services.

Ribeiro, more focused on the international business, is concerned that not enough U.S. companies are familiar with the IT services options in Brazil. He’d like to see the Brazilian government do a better job of branding and marketing the country’s IT resources.

The country already has an industry association in place: BRASSCOM, the Brazilian Association of Software and Service Export Companies, Brazil’s version of India’s NASSCOM (National Association of Software and Services Companies).

Posted by ana at 05:18 PM

Polics integrates Brazil and France in upgrade of SAP

Press Release
July 23rd, 2007

Aiming at to integrate the operations in France and Brazil, the Latécoère, French company specialized in design and production of fuselage structure, doors and systems of handles for commercial and military airplanes, upgrade of its systems SAP promoted one. The Polics, company of Politec Group directed toward the segment of implementation of systems SAP, lead this operation in Brazil.

With duration of four months and lead in set with the Latécoère matrix, settled in Toulouse, upgrade technician to the system version of 4.6 C for version ECC 6,0, activating fiscal books and magnetic registers of the standard SAP.

System SAP integrates the operations of the company in Brazil to the French, responsible matrix for the importation of used aeronautical aluminum in the production of the fuselages of the airplanes. Segundo Tales Airton Ferrari de Senço, Manager of Project of the Polics, “the synchronism of the Polics professionals with collaborators LDB and UNILOG (Consultant of France), and the proper Latécoère de Tolouse, it made with that the accomplishment of the work in this project was a true success”.

“We are happy with the result and the next stage will be the implementation of the new functionalities of system SAP ECC 6,0, of gradual form, minimizing eventual risks of imperfections”, designates Cláudio Souza, Administrative and Financial Manager of the Latécoère in Brazil that, between its customers, takes care of the Embraer.

For the Polics this operation was very important, and very represents for the company, supporting our plans, concludes the managing partner, Alexander Schmitz-Kohlitz. “Now we are reference also in the region of the Valley of the Paraiba and in France, and this will reflect positively in our strategy of expansion for Brazil, United States and until Europe”, it plans Schmitz-Kohlitz.

Posted by ana at 05:15 PM

June 05, 2007

U.S. tech companies give Brazil a go

30 May 2007
By Michelle Kessler
USA Today

SAN FRANCISCO -- Step aside, India and China. Brazil is the latest country with an emerging economy to attract big investments from U.S. tech companies.

Brazil, which is slightly smaller than the USA and has about two- thirds the population, has long had potential to become a significant tech market. But economic instability hindered growth.

Now that's changing. Tech spending in Brazil is expected to jump to $32.3 billion in 2011 from $20.5 billion this year, researcher IDC says. U.S. tech firms moving in include:

* Dell. The No.2 PC maker this month opened a major assembly plant near Sao Paulo. Dell eventually will have about 1,200 employees in Brazil -- about double what it had in 2005.

* Draper Fisher Jurvetson. The prominent Silicon Valley venture- capital firm opened its first Brazil fund this month in partnership with a local venture company. It has $40 million in capital, and a second fund worth about $100 million will follow soon, managing director Don Wood says.

*MySpace. The social-networking giant, now owned by News Corp., plans to launch MySpace Brazil this summer.

Other companies are making similar forays. Brazil veteran IBM recently announced a partnership with local video game company Hoplon Infotainment. Since Portuguese is Brazil's official language, Mozilla is touting a Portuguese version of its Firefox Web browser. Intel launched a $50 million Brazilian venture fund.

Brazil is growing fast, and, "We'd like to be part of that," says Terry Kahler, Dell's vice president for Latin America.

Brazil's economic growth has been stunted for decades by inflation exceeding 70% a month at times, says Patrice Franko, an economics professor at Colby College. Years of reform are bringing Brazil's currency, the real, under control, she says.

The financial turmoil left a mixed legacy. Brazil's per-capita gross domestic product is about $8,600, compared with $43,500 in the USA. But Brazil also has a highly developed banking system and entrepreneurial spirit, Franko says.

Now, due to the more stable currency, "We have a middle class emerging," says Elber Mazaro, marketing manager for Intel Brazil.

Growth isn't limited to U.S. companies. Brazil's largest PC maker isn't Dell or IBM, but Positivo Informatica in Curitiba.

Doing business in Brazil remains difficult. Taxes are high. Brazil has a thriving market for illegally imported goods, Kahler says. Plus, the gap between rich and poor -- some in drug-ridden shantytowns -- is rising, Franko says. That's led to an uptick in violence. Foreign workers "are living in privatized security enclaves in order to protect themselves," she says.

Posted by ana at 11:39 AM

May 15, 2007

Dell expands in new market

May 16, 2007
By Karla Palomo and Romina Nicaretta
Bloomberg News

Dell, the world's second-biggest personal-computer maker, opened a second plant in Brazil Monday to spur sales in a country where less than a fifth of homes have a computer.

The plant in Hortolandia, 72 miles northwest of Sao Paulo, will produce laptops, desktops and other equipment, according to a statement. Round Rock, Texas-based Dell declined to provide details about output and how much the plant cost to build.

Dell said international shipments surpassed those in the U.S. for the first time in the latest quarter. The company has sought to win customers in countries such as Brazil and China, whose economic growth has spurred consumer spending, after losing sales to competitor Hewlett-Packard.

''It's doubtful that we will have another billion customers in Western Europe, Canada and in the U.S.,'' Terry Kahler, Dell's vice president of Latin America, said in an interview last week. ``What we do think is that the next billion users will come from other countries like Brazil, Russia, India and China.''

Shipments of computers in those four countries nearly tripled from 2000 to 2006, according to Jay Gumbiner, director at research firm IDC Latin America.

Declining interest rates in Brazil, Latin America's largest economy, have fueled borrowing and helped push retail sales 9.4 percent higher in February, the latest period for which data are available.

The new Brazilian plant ensures the company will ''be much closer to where our customers are,'' Kahler said from Dell's headquarters. ``Seventy percent of our customers will be within a few miles of our factory, and we will be able to deliver a better-quality product.''

Dell shares fell 54 cents to $25.27 in Nasdaq Stock Market trading. The stock is little-changed this year.

Only 8.1 million homes out of a total of 51.8 million have a computer in Brazil, according to Alexandre Magalhaes, a senior analyst at Brazilian Ibope Media Information. Brazil's gross domestic product growth accelerated to 4.8 percent in the latest period compared with a year earlier, more than twice the U.S. rate.

The rate in China was 11.1 percent.

Dell's Brazilian operation, which already exports to Argentina, Chile and Colombia, plans to start exporting to other countries in the region thanks to the new plant, Kahler said.

Dell plans to add 70 jobs at its plant in Eldorado do Sul, in southern Brazil, for software development, the company said in an e-mail today. The plant currently employs 750 people.

Founder Michael Dell returned as chief executive officer in January to help the company regain the market lead from Hewlett-Packard.

The company reported in March that fourth-quarter revenue probably totaled $14.4 billion, compared with $15.2 billion in the same period a year earlier.

The figure was preliminary because of an ongoing accounting investigation, which may force Dell to restate results.

Posted by ana at 05:22 PM

May 08, 2007

IBM opens market doors for partners

May 8, 2007
By China Martens
PC World

IBM Corp. is helping shepherd increasing numbers of local software companies onto the global stage as they move outside of the comfort zone of their home markets.

As well as software vendors looking to grow their revenue by developing an international business, increasingly customers are demanding that their technology providers can operate globally, according to Mark Hanny, vice president of ISV (independent software vendor) alliances with IBM. He was speaking this week at IBM's PartnerWorld conference in St. Louis.

IBM acts as a consultant to ISVs as they look to establish themselves in new markets. The vendor provides technical help, advice on the localization of their products, and how to get connected to local partners. IBM currently has 33 Innovation Centers around the world where partners can go to for such assistance or they can connect with the centers virtually. IBM expects to launch an additional three centers later this year, mostly likely in Eastern Europe.

In many cases, IBM has had a presence in countries for decades, for example, having in operations in China for 50 years and in Brazil for 90 years. In those markets, "We are a local company," Hanny said.

The key piece of advice from both Hanny and ISVs who've partnered with IBM to enter new markets is the importance of hiring local people from the get-go, particularly around providing presales and postsales support for the software.

Business applications vendor TOTVS/Microsiga, which already dominates its home Brazilian small to midsize business market, has teamed up with IBM to reach other countries in Latin America.

Coming from a Portguese-speaking nation meant TOTVS could easily sell its software in Portugal and through that country also reach users in the Portuguese-speaking nations in Africa of Angola and Mozambique. However, moving into Spanish-speaking nations in Latin America wasn't so straightforward, according to Claudio Bessa, corporate marketing and business director at TOTVS/Microsiga.

The Spanish used in each country is different as is the style of negotiating business deals, another reason why having locals in place from day-one is so important, he said. Also, Latin American countries have a host of legal and financial issues relating to ERP (enterprise resource planning) software. "The rules change every day, every single hour," Bessa added, not entirely joking.

The Brazilian ISV's software previously only ran on Microsoft Corp.'s Windows operating system, and TOTVS has worked with IBM to have it also run on Linux.

Many companies initially look to enter markets that are geographically close to them. For example, business applications vendor Ufida Software Co. Ltd., the largest ISV in China, is expanding its business elsewhere in Asia, notably Japan, Malaysia and Singapore. IBM is helping Ufida enter those markets.

Hanny said he won't be surprised to see Ufida and another Chinese ISV Kingdee International Software Group Co. Ltd., which caters mostly to small to midsize business applications users, as well as Brazil's TOTVS, enter the U.S. market within a few years.

"IBM's global technology unit [in Tel Aviv] was like our commando unit; it opened doors," Udi Mokady, founder, president and CEO of Cyber-Ark Software Inc. The digital vault software vendor was founded in Israel, but soon after that established its headquarters in the U.S. in Newton, Massachusetts, retaining its research and development arm in Israel.

Working closely with IBM can be "something of a leap of faith" for a small ISV since it may involve the sharing of information about potential customers, he said. The ISV has to trust that IBM's "in business not to take our business," Mokady added.

The relationship between IBM and ISVs is very much a two-way street.

With its headquarters in Ra'anana, Israel, Exanet Inc. specializes in clustered network-attached storage software. The company is partnering with IBM to access potential users in France, Germany, Japan and the U.K . "We need IBM and their reach to the customer," said Rami Schwartz, CEO of Exanet. At the same time, Exanet, which won a deal with the U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), has given IBM access to a piece of NASA with which the U.S. company wasn't doing business previously.

IBM has been focusing on emerging markets for several years, notable five nations it dubs the BRICK countries -- Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Korea. The company is also seeing rapid growth elsewhere in the world.

"Eastern Europe is an unbelievable growth area," Hanny said. "I see Eastern Europe as being one of the real leaders in IT." He namechecked Romania and Poland as particularly strong areas for homegrown software development. In Asia-Pacific, "Vietnam is starting to step up," Hanny added. "We see a lot of really good seeds of IT shooting up."

IBM is also working with U.S. companies looking to extend their worldwide reach, for instance supply chain software vendor Manhattan Associates Inc., which hopes to gain more customers in Asia-Pacific.

"Partnering with IBM in global markets gives us a leg up," said Jeff Cashman, senior vice president of business development at Manhattan Associates.

The ISV had previously tried to enter overseas markets solo with a direct sales team from the U.S. and didn't see the results it had hoped for, realizing that the way software is sold in the U.S. is not the same, say, as in Japan or France.

"Once you're in a market, you've got to deliver," Cashman said. "Your credibility in a local market can go very quickly."

Posted by ana at 10:43 AM

April 27, 2007

'$100 Laptop' to Cost $175

April 26, 2007
By Brian Bergstein
Associated Press

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. -- The founder of the ambitious "$100 laptop" project, which plans to give inexpensive computers to schoolchildren in developing countries, revealed Thursday that the machine for now costs $175, and it will be able to run Windows in addition to its homegrown, open-source interface.

Nicholas Negroponte, the former director of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Media Lab who now heads the nonprofit One Laptop Per Child project, updated analysts and journalists on where the effort stands, saying "we are perhaps at the most critical stage of OLPC's life."

That's partly because at least seven nations have expressed interest in being in the initial wave to buy the little green-and-white "XO" computers _ Uruguay, Argentina, Brazil, Pakistan, Thailand, Nigeria and Libya _ but it remains unclear which ones will be first to pony up the cash. The project needs orders for 3 million machines so its manufacturing and distribution effort can get rolling.

The ever-optimistic Negroponte didn't sound worried, however: He expects mass production to begin by October, and he said many other countries, including Peru and Russia, have been inquiring about taking part.

The XO machines will be made by Quanta Computer Inc., the world's leading manufacturer of portable computers. Quanta agreed to take a profit of about $3 per machine, less than what it gets from mainstream PC companies, Negroponte said.

Even so, the machine _ which boasts extremely low electricity consumption, a pulley for hand-generated power, built-in wireless networking and a screen with indoor and outdoor reading modes _ now costs $175. The One Laptop project takes an additional $1 to fund its distribution efforts.

Negroponte's team has always stressed that $100 was a long-term target for the machines, but recently publicized figures had put it in the $150 range. Negroponte says the cost should drop about 25 percent per year as the project unfolds. He added that Citigroup Inc.'s Citibank division has agreed to facilitate a payment system on a pro bono basis; Citibank will float payments to Quanta and other laptop suppliers, and governments will repay the bank.

Even at $175, the computers upend the standard economics in the PC industry. A huge reason has been XO's use of the free, open-source Linux operating system, tweaked for this project with the help of one of its sponsors, Red Hat Inc.

The result is that XO's software is highly original, in hopes of making the computer useful as a collaborative tool and intuitive for children who have never before encountered a computer. There are no windows or folders, but rather an interface heavily reliant on pictographic icons.

However, Negroponte disclosed that XO's developers have been working with Microsoft Corp. so a version of Windows can run on the machines as well. It could be the $3 software package that Microsoft announced last week for governments that subsidize student computers. It includes Windows XP Starter Edition and some of Microsoft's "productivity" software.

Word of Microsoft's involvement was somewhat striking given that the software company and its closest corporate partner, Intel Corp., have questioned whether the One Laptop Per Child's computers will do much to stimulate educational gains. Bill Gates once denigrated the machine as not being a "decent computer." And Intel is pushing its own inexpensive computer for developing countries, the $400 Classmate PC.

The ever-optimistic Negroponte turned those criticisms around on Thursday, arguing that Microsoft wouldn't have bothered with its $3 international software package and Intel wouldn't be pushing Classmate unless they had something to fear from One Laptop Per Child's innovations.

Whether the XO machines might someday land in U.S. schools has been an open question. Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney announced at one point that he wanted to buy the machines for students in his state. Some time later, Negroponte said Thursday, One Laptop Per Child decided not to work with American schools because "we've designed something for a totally different situation" _ meaning kids in poor countries.

Now, he added, that might change, since 19 state governors have shown interest. One of them was then-Florida Gov. Jeb Bush. When Bush first e-mailed and casually signed "Jeb," Negroponte needed to ask his brother, former national intelligence director John Negroponte, whether the query was legitimate.

Posted by ana at 09:34 AM

April 03, 2007

Wage Cost Advantages of Offshoring to Carry Till 2027: Study

April 3, 2007
By Global Services

Labor cost advantage of offshore locations for office services will continue till 2027, says study by A.T. Kearney, a global management-consulting firm. Even though wages in offshore locations for services, such as IT, business processes and call centers, have started to rise, they will remain cheaper for the foreseeable future under the most aggressive projections of wage inflation and currency appreciation in developing countries.

A.T. Kearney’s Global Services Location Index (See Table) also finds that the labor cost advantage of the leading offshore destinations declined almost universally, while the plus points for these countries are their significantly increasing talent pool and maturing business and policy environment. The analysis — based on the findings from more than 40 metrics comparing the financial attractiveness, people skills and business environment of 50 countries worldwide — found that India and China registered declining costs advantages but also scored high in terms of improving talent supply and business environment.

This year’s index reflects the growing number of countries competing to establish themselves as remote-services locations and includes ten new countries — including the three Baltic States and Ukraine in Eastern Europe, Sri Lanka and Pakistan in South Asia, Uruguay in Latin America, and Morocco, Senegal, and Mauritius.

South East Asian countries reinforce their position as the primary alternates to India and China, with all six major ASEAN markets (Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam) now ranked among the top 20 locations.

Reflecting new policy initiatives to promote service exports in many countries, Latin America performs well, with all five major contenders (Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Mexico and Uruguay) rising in the rankings.

The newer contenders in Central and Eastern Europe are increasingly outshining more established players, as Bulgaria, Slovakia and the Baltic States move ahead, while the Czech Republic, Hungary and Poland slip in the rankings. The Middle East and Africa continue to rise in visibility, with Egypt, Jordan, the United Arab Emirates, Tunisia, Ghana, South Africa, Israel and Turkey all maintaining or improving their position, while Mauritius, Morocco and Senegal debut in the rankings.

While most onshore or nearshore locations in developed countries improved their absolute scores, almost all fell in the rankings, as emerging markets improved their people skills and environment scores at a faster rate.

Global Services Location Index 2006:

1. India
2. China
3. Malaysia
4. Thailand
5. Brazil
6. Indonesia
7. Chile
8. Philippines
9. Bulgaria
10. Mexico
11. Singapore
12. Slovakia
13. Egypt
14. Jordan
15. Estonia
16. Czech Republic
17. Latvia
18. Poland
19. Vietnam
20. United Arab Emirates
21. United States (Tier II)*
22. Uruguay
23. Argentina
24. Hungary
25. Mauritius
26. Tunisia
27. Ghana
28. Lithuania
29. Sri Lanka
30. Pakistan
31. South Africa
32. Jamaica
33. Romania
34. Costa Rica
35. Canada
36. Morocco
37. Russia
38. Israel
39. Senegal
40. Germany (Tier II)*
41. Panama
42. United Kingdom (Tier II)*
43. Spain
44. New Zealand
45. Australia
46. Portugal
47. Ukraine
48. France (Tier II)*
49. Turkey
50. Ireland

Posted by ana at 01:54 PM

March 28, 2007

Stefanini Ranked #9 Outsourcing Vendor Global End-to-End by Analysts

March 28, 2007
Press Release
By Stefanini

FORT LAUDERDALE, FL, March 28 – Stefanini IT Solutions has been ranked among the top ten End to End Global Outsourcing Vendor in a survey by the Brown & Wilson Group, publishers of the best-selling book The Black Book of Outsourcing. Ranked #9 in the Outsourcing Vendor Global End-to-End in 2006, Stefanini IT Solutions is the first South American company to enter the ranking.

The Top 10 Outsourcing Vendor Global End-to-End is a subset of the 2006 Top 50 Best Managed Global Outsourcing Vendor survey conducted annually by the Brown & Wilson Group. The results are based on the responses of more than 17,000 clients, users and analysts in 31 countries. The Top 10 Outsourcing Vendor Global End-to-End segment consisted of 18 criteria related to operational excellence in IT outsourcing.

“Stefanini Brazil has been rapidly growing over the last years, particularly in the financial services and manufacturing sectors”, said Doug Brown, Principal at Brown & Wilson Group. “The Global End-to-End category includes all IT services from assessment through operations. It encompasses all IT outsourcing functions rather than just one or a few specific functions.”

“Being among the top ten in the world, along with heavy-weights such as IBM, HP, EDS and Unysis, is an important acknowledgement of our work, especially because the ranking is based on industry feedback,” said Antonio Moreira, Stefanini CEO North America. “We are committed to offering our clients an excellent cost/benefit package and constant investment in innovation.”

http://www.theblackbookofoutsourcing.com/top10itoglobalendtoend.html

About Stefanini Stefanini
IT Solutions is a Global IT Services provider with over 4,800 employees and 32 offices located in 14 countries in South America, North America, Europe, Africa, and India. Stefanini was incorporated in the US in 2001 and currently has offices in Fort Lauderdale, New York, and Atlanta. The company’s offshore development centers are located in Brazil, a top-five location worldwide for IT. Stefanini provides offshore, nearshore, and onshore custom application development and maintenance, ERP, and also infrastructure services.

http://www.stefanini-usa.com

About The Brown & Wilson Group
The Brown & Wilson Group is recognized for offering balanced, objective and unbiased offshoring advisory for organizations worldwide looking to assess, evaluate, and advise their sourcing plans and strategies.

www.brown-wilson.com

STEFANINI CONTACTS:
Stefanini IT Solutions
www.stefanini-usa.com
Antonio Moreira
CEO North America
amoreira@stefanini-usa.com
Tel: (954) 229-9150

PRESS INFORMATION:
DFREIRE, COMUNICAÇÃO E NEGÓCIOS
Contacts: Debora Freire and Patricia Toddai
Tel: (55) 11 5505 8922
debora@dfreire.com.br
patrícia@dfreire.com.br

Posted by ana at 10:48 AM

March 13, 2007

TVA Builds WiMAX Trial Network in Brazil with Nortel

March 12, 2007
By Anuradha Shukla
TMCnet

TVA, a major pay TV company in Brazil, is building a WiMAX trial network based on innovative 4G solutions and services from Nortel. The carrier will use Nortel’s mobile MIMO-powered WiMAX (802.16e) solution to quickly and cost-effectively deliver true high-speed broadband access, mobile TV and video, VoIP, streaming media, data applications, and mobile electronic commerce.

“With 4G/WiMAX, Nortel is changing the economics of the game and positioning carriers to deliver true mobile broadband and a hyper-connected communication experience to businesses and consumers,” said Juan Chico, president, Nortel Brazil.

He continued: “Our trial agreement with TVA will allow us to demonstrate the technology’s ability to replicate the user’s fixed PC capabilities, such as blogging, video and VoIP, from any location.”

Testing will reportedly start in second quarter of 2007 in the city of São Paulo on the 2.5 GHz frequency band. An end-to-end solution will be provided by Nortel for the trial including consumer devices, base stations, ASN gateway and professional services. In addition to providing the equipment Nortel will also be responsible for the deployment, support and maintenance of the entire infrastructure for the trial network.

According to VirgC-lio Amaral, director Strategy and Technology, TVA their organization has been working to maximize use of the Multichannel Multipoint Distribution Service spectrum.

“Through this trial with Nortel, we can reinforce our efforts to increase our service portfolio moving forward,” he added.

Compared to traditional broadband systems, WiMAX network provide many advantages. The flexibility of this network enables hybrid connectivity both for wireline and wireless services. Deploying a WiMAX network does not require fixed lines and therefore it involves one-third the investment of a wired network and improves operator profitability through reduced deployment time, operation and maintenance costs.

WiMAX delivers superior data throughput and mobility. This allows users to stay connected and experience true broadband, even while on the move.

TVA is a triple play operator in Brazil, offering home entertainment, information, culture and education to its subscribers through diversified Subscription TV (TVA), broadband Internet (Ajato) and VoIP (TVA Voz) services.

Nortel delivers communications capabilities that make the promise of Business Made Simple a reality for their customers.

Posted by ana at 10:15 AM

February 27, 2007

Politec named a Global Services Top 10 Best Performing IT Services Provider

February 27, 2007
Press Release
By Politec

Politec was included in the Global Services GS100, a prestigious annual list of the world's 100 most innovative service providers, as selected by Global Services magazine. In addition, Politec was named a South of the Border Leader, and also named a Top 10 Best Performing IT Services Provider. "Of the three recognitions we received yesterday, we are most honored to have been included in the Top 10 Best Performers list," said Dalton Luz, CEO of Politec USA. "The ranking features many of the best-known names in outsourcing from India, and Politec was the only Brazilian company listed. Our inclusion accurately reflects the marketplace we are competing and winning in today."

More than just a statistics-based ranking, the Global Services Best Performing IT Services Providers is an award to companies that show a pattern of innovation and dedication to customer satisfaction. "Politec's customers already know the quality, innovation, efficiency, and range of services we have to offer," added Luz. "This is a great opportunity for Global Services readers to learn about us too."

The Global Services 100, now in its second year, is a tool for buyers of business and technology services. Judges from Global Services magazine team up with outsourcing experts at neoIT, a consulting firm that specializes in services globalization, to identify and evaluate the leading service providers located on four continents. The evaluation is based upon data provided by the service providers and third parties regarding effective operations, service offerings, client relationships and human capital. Winners are selected in each of 11 categories including service-delivery areas such as business process outsourcing, IT services and customer care. Winners are also selected in regions such as Eastern Europe, Asia, and Latin America.

Global Services is an integrated media brand with a portfolio offering that includes a magazine, a website, events, a newsletter and customized solutions. The audience is composed of corporate professionals engaged in the sourcing and management of business and technology services across North America and Western Europe. Global Services is owned by CMP-CyberMedia LLC. The team is co-located in the United States and India.

neoIT is a management consulting firm that helps leading corporations improve and grow their business by capitalizing on services globalizationSM. Through a blend of strategic advisory services and hands-on execution support, neoIT provides advice and management expertise on the globalization of Information Technology (IT) and Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) services. For more information, visit www.neoIT.com.

Politec is the largest Brazilian IT services firm, with more than 6,000 employees, over $230 million in revenue in 2006, and offices in the US, Japan, and throughout Brazil. For more information, visit www.politec.com.

Posted by ana at 11:07 AM

February 09, 2007

Brazil to Invest 10 Billion Reais in Biotechnology

February 8, 2007
Bloomberg News
By Katia Cortes and Carlos Caminada

Brazil plans to invest 10 billion reais ($4.77 billion) in biotechnology over the next decade to fuel growth in agriculture, pharmaceuticals and other industries. Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva signed a decree today creating the program to invest 1 billion reais annually for 10 years. Lula also called on companies to match the government's investments.

The cash will be used to fund research and development of a new strain of sugarcane that is resistant to droughts, a vaccine for rabies and other projects. By stepping up biotechnology funding, Brazil, the world's biggest grower of sugarcane, oranges and coffee and home to 20 percent of the planet's living species, aims to meet rising demand for its crops and reduce its dependence on foreign pharmaceutical makers such as Pfizer Inc.

``Brazil has strengths that put us in a position to stand out in these new technologies,'' said Lula, 61, during a ceremony today at the presidential palace in Brasilia. ``This policy will help Brazil realize this potential.''

Biotechnology has already fueled growth among Brazil's ethanol makers. Developments of more-productive cane strains over the past three decades have helped the South American country make the biofuel at a lower cost than gasoline. Ethanol cost Brazilian distributors about 37 percent less on average than gasoline last week, the National Petroleum Agency said.

A Cheaper Biofuel

In the U.S., where ethanol is made from corn, the biofuel has cost an average of 99 cents a gallon more than gasoline for the past nine years, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.

By developing new cane varieties, Brazil could expand crops into areas that don't receive as much rain as the center-south region of the country, where 85 percent of Brazil's sugar and ethanol are produced. The government will research new species that can better withstand droughts that are frequent in the northeast, where cane productivity is 30 percent lower than in the center-south, the Agriculture Ministry said.

The government may fall short of its investment goals in coming years because spending controls and bureaucracy in the Latin American country slow the allocation of earmarked funds, said Anderson Galvao, director at Celeres, a Uberlandia, Brazil- based crop forecaster and researcher.

``Brazil needs to speed up the process of actually sending funds that have been approved for research,'' Galvao said in a telephone interview from Cuiaba, Brazil. ``Often, approved funds never reach the researchers.''

Approval Delays

Delays to get innovations approved by the biotech regulator may also thwart Brazil's efforts, Galvao said. The lower house has passed a bill that aims to speed up the process by allowing approvals through a simple majority at the regulator's board instead of the current two-third majority. Senators haven't voted on the bill yet.

Brazil is home to a 10th of the world's genetically modified crops. Planting in Brazil of biotech crops, including herbicide-tolerant soybeans, jumped 22 percent last year to 11.5 million hectares, the non-profit International Service for the Acquisition of Agri-biotech Applications, or ISAAA, said last month.

Brazil, where about 40 percent of the population lives on less than $2 a day, is also seeking to boost domestic production of generic drugs that cost less than medicines made by major pharmaceutical makers such as Pfizer, the world's largest.

Copy-Cat Drugs

Pfizer is among drug companies losing revenue to copy-cat versions of its medicines worldwide. The New York-based company last month said it would eliminate 10 percent of its workforce because of competition from cheaper generic drugs.

Lula also created a group to help the 1,700 existing biotech research organizations communicate more easily, Trade Minister Luiz Fernando Furlan said.

``Brazil has the full potential to attract all the resources needed in this area,'' Furlan said at a news conference in Brasilia yesterday. ``What we lack is the connection of good projects with the funds.''

To contact the reporters on this story: Katia Cortes in Brasilia at kcortes@bloomberg.net ; Carlos Caminada in Sao Paulo at at ccaminada1@bloomberg.net

Posted by ana at 09:57 AM

January 25, 2007

Soccer, Samba and Outsourcing?

January 25, 2007
Wall Street Journal
By Antonio Regalado

Brazil Hopes Its Strength In Computers Makes It The India of the Americas

SAO PAULO, Brazil -- Robert Lazarski, a computer programmer from Denver, met a Brazilian girl on a train in Europe. Soon they married and moved to a beach city on Brazil's northern coast, and Mr. Lazarski was looking for work. So he hung out a shingle on the Internet: outsourcing.

Mr. Lazarski, who is 38 and sports shoulder-length blond hair, says his business writing software for small U.S. companies is doing well after a slow start -- and he enjoys Brazil's "better weather and a better quality of life. Everything has worked out quite well."

Outsourcing seems to be working out well for South America's most populous nation, too. With a spate of information-technology deals, Brazil appears poised to be Latin America's big winner in the global outsourcing boom. Last year, Gap Inc. moved computer work to Brazil as part of a 10 year, $1.1 billion contract with International Business Machines Corp. Whirlpool Corp. manages corporate data here, and some smaller companies are using Brazil to try outsourcing for the first time.

With time zones and a culture closer to those of the U.S. than Bangalore or Beijing, small operators such as Mr. Lazarski and multinationals including Accenture Ltd. and IBM are betting that Brazil could quickly become Latin America's major hub for inexpensive corporate support work, and a top-five location world-wide.

Brazilian-owned firms, which are tiny by global standards, are also trying to get business in the U.S. Two years ago, Politec Ltda. launched a "near-shore initiative" to get work from U.S. corporations and says that so far it has several small contracts worth $1 million each but expects 2007 to be a banner year.

Brazil's chances in the outsourcing market are a spillover of India's success. While Brazil isn't as cheap as India, wages here are still substantially lower than in the U.S. Major Indian firms such as Tata Group made doing computer and office work for less abroad into a huge business. Now the $47 billion market is ballooning at more than 20% a year, too fast for India to keep pace, according to the Everest Group LP, a Dallas-based consultancy that advises companies on how to outsource.

Brazil's major selling point is that its big cities are just one to three hours ahead of New York, depending on the time of year. That compares with 11 or 12 hours for India. Another pitch heard frequently is "shared values," a reference to cultural mismatches that have sometimes gummed up projects in Asia. " 'Yes' in Brazil typically means 'yes.' In India, it may mean 'no,' " says Peter Bendor-Samuel, Everest's chief executive.

Unlike India, Brazil already has a large domestic market for computers and services, worth about $7.7 billion a year, according to estimates. That means many big technology companies already have a Brazilian presence. Now some are quickly redeploying to capture international jobs. For instance, in 2004 IBM began putting $100 million into its Brazil operations, based principally in its former computer factory outside of Sao Paulo, Brazil's commercial capital.

Staffing has grown quickly since them -- IBM added 2,000 people last year in Brazil to bring its total to 10,000 -- mostly to handle new work from clients such as Whirlpool. The appliance maker had been paying IBM to provide desktop support in Portuguese for its Brazilian division. So when it decided in 2005 to outsource management of some of its U.S. computer operations, that work also landed in Brazil, says Brent Glendening, a Whirlpool vice president for global information systems. Whirlpool didn't answer questions about U.S. layoffs associated with the deals.

Outsourcing companies say their biggest stumbling block is that the only things many Americans have heard about Brazil are its soccer prowess and its samba music or its violent slums. "The first question is 'Is it safe?' The second is 'When do we go to Rio?' " says James Bergamini, a former Lucent Technologies executive who recently started a software firm, Daitan Labs, outside of Sao Paulo.

To burnish Brazil's profile, the government and a new trade organization, Brasscom, paid consulting firm A.T. Kearney Inc. to create a road map for Brazil's industry and launched a series of presentations at conferences and for companies last year in the U.S. Now industry consultants are starting to talk up Brazil and predict 2007 will be the year it gains recognition as an outsourcing destination.

Ironically, Brazil's technology sector got a big boost from its chaotic past. During the 1980s and 1990s, a ban on importing some business computers spurred domestic manufacturing. And to cope with runaway inflation, big banks had to develop sophisticated computer systems. "The government would call on Friday and say that on Monday the currency will have three less digits," says Ricardo Saur, executive director of Brasscom.

As a result, the country has more programming talent available than regional rivals. Skilled Mexican workers tend to drain northward to the U.S., and Chile's citizenry, though well-educated, numbers only 16 million, compared with Brazil's 190 million. That leaves Brazil as the top choice for staffing big "factories," industry lingo for the campus-like centers where workers monitor computer systems, write software or handle calls.

Recently, Indian firms have started making moves in Brazil, as well. In June, Wipro Technologies, a division of Bangalore's Wipro Ltd., paid $50 million for a Portuguese software company, taking on 70 staffers in Brazil. Sudip Banerjee, Wipro Technologies' president for enterprise solutions, says plans call for the Brazilian foothold to rapidly grow to 200 people.

Brazil brings its own national quirks to the globalization game. Brazilian executives kiss and hug one another in the office. In a video produced by IBM for visiting Americans, viewers are cautioned that Brazilians are likely to be late to meetings. Make a lot of eye contact and don't try to make business points with "charts and data," the video advises.

Mr. Lazarski, who started his software company, Brazil Outsourcing LLC, two and a half years ago, says he did it as a way to earn U.S. dollars overseas. He charges $25 an hour to create Web pages and database programs for several U.S. clients. That is about twice what he could earn locally but less than half what a U.S. programmer would cost. "I am making twice as much money, and they are paying 50%," says Mr. Lazarski, who lives near the beach in Fortaleza.

Brazil isn't as inexpensive as it once was, however. The value of the real, the Brazilian currency, has climbed steeply against the dollar since 2003 as Brazil's economy has stabilized. Factor in rising wages and Brazil's punishing taxes, and some companies think the picture is mixed. "Will it still be a competitive offshore destination? Over time I see that changing," says Stephen Heidt, vice president of service-delivery operations at Electronic Data Systems Corp., a business-service company with $20 billion in revenue. The Plano, Texas, company has 10,000 people in Brazil but is hedging its bets by expanding two centers it operates in Argentina.

Analysts who are bullish on Brazil think the country can be highly competitive and can capture as much as $10 billion in international outsourcing work by 2010, up from about half a billion today. Others, like Mr. Lazarski, who gets most of his work through ads on Internet search engines, prefers not to grow too fast. He thinks it could be risky, and "now I can take time off when I want," he says.

Write to Antonio Regalado at antonio.regalado@wsj.com

Posted by ana at 09:44 AM

January 18, 2007

Brazil Sees Record Number of Mergers

January 18, 2007
By Houston Chronicle

SAO PAULO, Brazil - Brazil saw a record number of mergers and acquisitions in 2006, according to a report compiled by the KPMG consultancy service.

There was a total of 473 mergers and acquisitions involving Brazilian companies in 2006, up from 363 in 2006, it said.

"Mergers and acquisitions have been on an upward curve during the whole of 2006 and this trend is set to continue in 2007," said Andre Castello Branco, a KPMG director.

Cross-border operations represented 61 percent of all operations in 2006.

There was a growth in Brazilian companies acquiring foreign assets in 2006. In total, some 118 of these operations occurred, up 96 percent on the year before.

Among those deals were the purchase of Canadian nickel miner Inco by Companhia Vale do Rio Doce, or CVRD, and a joint venture between Gerdau Ameristeel Corp. and steel contractors Pacific Coast Steel Inc.

The most active sector in terms of mergers and acquisitions was the energy sector with 61 transactions, followed by the information technology sector, with 46 transactions.

Posted by ana at 05:04 PM

January 12, 2007

CPM and Redknee announce telecom solutions

January 12, 2006
Press Release

Companies Sign Reseller Agreement to Offer Operators Solutions for Developing Differentiated Services

TORONTO and UK - Redknee Inc., a leading provider of innovative infrastructure software that monetizes and personalizes services and content for mobile users, today announced that CPM, one of Brazil's largest technology companies, has signed a reseller agreement with Redknee. Together, the companies will be in a position to offer differentiated services that cater specifically to the Brazilian telecom market.

"This new offering, developed in partnership with Redknee, shares CPM's vision of growth, which focuses on satisfying the needs of the Brazilian market," said Manoellito Ferreira, Director of IT Consulting and Business Solutions at CPM.

"Redknee is pleased to work with CPM in the Brazilian market to enable operators to differentiate, and remain competitive," said Lucas Skoczkowski, CEO of Redknee. "The infrastructure solution developed in collaboration with CPM helps operators grow and offer new services and content for mobile users."

Personalization and monetization of subscriber services, based upon real-time billing and other solutions that interact efficiently with existing infrastructure, represent some of the key strategic and operating challenges for telecom operators today. At the same time, strong competitive pressures are leading operators to provide differentiation and variety in their content and other offerings, while diversifying their products and services in voice, data, and mobile commerce. From a financial standpoint, there is an increasing pressure for leading operators to provide popular value-added products and services while driving down costs.

The alliance between Redknee and CPM and the core solution offering jointly developed by them aims to meet these increased demands, based upon:

Personalization: Transactions between operators and customers gain greater added value with personalized user profiles. Access to profiles for services and partnerships are secure, unified, and private, allowing companies to quantify, analyze, and optimize how services are provided. As a result, it becomes possible to reward the customers for their loyalty and frequent purchases, or to stimulate the purchase of differentiated services by the end user.

Monetization: Based on monetization, transactions are paid in real time. Accounting entries can begin to reflect the true subscriber configuration, relying on consistent voice, SMS and data-whether subscribers pre-pay, post-pay, or pay in groups. This allows open billing interfaces to incorporate their own mobile commerce system or a partner's system, while the control policy allows expansion of differentiated offerings to the end user.

About CPM
CPM, one of the country's fastest-growing technology companies, specializes in IT consulting and business solutions, applications outsourcing, and infrastructure solutions. In 2005, the company reported total billings of 681 million reales, which represents a 48% growth over the previous year. Sales were even more significant, reaching 721 million reales, 53% greater than in 2004.

About Redknee
Redknee is a leading provider of infrastructure software and services for mobile communications providers. Since its inception in 1999, Redknee's customer base has grown to thirty mobile operating companies, which provide services to over 275 million wireless subscribers in over twenty countries. Redknee's customer base includes 4 of the 10 largest mobile communications service providers or groups world wide as determined by subscriber count. The Group's ISO 9001:2000 certified infrastructure software provides these mobile communications service providers with the capability to monetize and personalize up to 2.4 billion transactions every month.

Posted by ana at 10:31 AM

January 03, 2007

Brazil to Join Digital TV World

January 3, 2007
IPS News
By Mario Osava

RIO DE JANEIRO, Jan 3 (IPS) - In a country as addicted to television as Brazil, disputes over digital TV, which is being installed this year, are naturally acerbic. The business is worth an estimated 50 billion dollars, and could bring profound social and cultural changes.

The first battle was won by television channels, when the government announced in June 2006 that the Japanese model of digital TV would be used. That was the conclusion reached by the movement to democratise communications, which is demanding a system that will promote development of local technologies, a diversity of channels and of content producers, and mass access to the Internet.

Brazilian television is concentrated in a few powerful networks, owned by a handful of families. Digital TV is an opportunity to revert this situation, argued the movement's activists, but the first government decision dashed their hopes.

Present networks will be granted another channel for digital emissions, with the same bandwidth as they currently use for analogue broadcasting. Thus existing networks will each have two bands during the 10-year transition period, with simultaneous transmission of analogue and digital signals.

There will be less room on the airways for public, educational, trade union and other civil society institution TV channels, which might have diversified content and offered a variety of services via TV, such as electronic shopping, telemedicine, distance education and electronic government -- that is, public information and services.

Digital signals have four times the capacity per channel compared to analogue, so broadcasters do not need the same amount of bandwidth for the new type of signal, according to critics. However, high-definition television requires more bandwidth, and it is in the networks' interest to provide it, in order to cater for the most demanding viewers, belonging to the wealthier sectors of the population.

Every detail is important and generates conflicts of interests in a country where television is the most important medium for information and entertainment. Televisions are present in 91.4 percent of homes, compared to radios which are present in 88 percent, according to official figures for 2005.

Digital television also provides an opportunity to promote wider access to the digital world, as an alternative to computers in terms of access to the Internet. In Brazil only 18.6 percent of homes have computers, and less than one-quarter of them are connected to the Internet.

Activists and organisations associated with the National Forum for the Democratisation of Communication (FNDC) fear that this opportunity may not be awarded the priority it deserves, because of pressure from the television networks and related industries.

But the decisive battle will be the definition of a new regulatory framework for communication. "The technology chosen is not the main issue," Angelo Augusto Ribeiro, a journalist and university professor who studied digital TV for his master's degree and is doing further research on the subject for his doctorate, told IPS.

It is necessary to update the Brazilian Telecommunications Code of 1962, which is so outdated that it does not even contemplate interactivity in broadcasting media, so that it is in legal conflict with the June 2006 presidential decree that instituted the Brazilian Terrestrial Digital Television System (SBTVD-T).

A new law could satisfy many of FNDC's demands, such as obliging television channels to fulfil a quota for community, educational and other public service programming, and making them include independent and decentralised productions, as well as access to the Internet and email, Ribeiro said.

Some channels, for instance, only air newscasts because the present law stipulates that five percent of their daily programming must be dedicated to reporting the news, he pointed out, stressing how important the new set of regulations would be. The problem is that Congress is dominated by parliamentarians who own or have personal links to the media, especially radio stations, he said.

The technology that is used is a less crucial question, Ribeiro said, because it tends to be solved through competition and market demand, so that current differences over the available options will be overcome.

For example, the type of modulation used in the United States was primarily oriented towards high-definition TV, to the detriment of interactivity and digital inclusiveness, which were less relevant in a country where close to 70 percent of the population already has access to the Internet, he explained. But technologies are now being developed to address those aspects that were previously neglected.

The Japanese technology was closest to Brazilian needs, according to objectives defined by a lengthy national debate, Ribeiro said. Now the challenge is to incorporate resources, equipment and software developed in Brazil, to serve local needs and reality.. The actual system is a much broader thing than the underlying technology, the expert explained.

The most immediate question in economic terms has to do with production of the set-top box, the decoding apparatus that will allow today's analogue TV sets to receive digital signals. A "simple" decoder has been chosen, costing about 100 reals (46 dollars), according to Communications Minister Helio Costa. Production and sales will be worth nine billion reals (4.2 billion dollars) in the first three years, he estimated.

But the set-top box itself will not provide interactivity or Internet connection, aspects that will depend on progress in the digital TV system, for which many components remain undefined.

In any case, a very complex decoder would be expensive, and price is an important factor to consider when establishing digital TV in a country where most people are poor, if the new form of television is to remain popular.

Brazil's decisions about digital TV will influence, and perhaps determine, the choices made by other South American countries, Ribeiro pointed out, because the new technology depends on having a huge market, and not even Brazil was able to develop a system that was entirely its own.

There are three digital TV models worldwide, developed by Japan, the United States and the European Union.

Brazil chose the Japanese technology, and hopes to add to it many locally-developed components, and even technology that Japan and other countries using the same broadcasting model could use. The expectation is that neighbouring countries will follow in Brazil's footsteps, enlarging the market and the possibilities for greater participation in the development of this new technology.

The introduction of digital TV in Brazil culminates a debate begun in 1992, which involved about 1,200 researchers from 79 public and private institutions, accumulating knowledge and technology that are already being exported, such as a decoder for the U.S. market.

Posted by ana at 12:31 PM

December 08, 2006

Intel to Compete with OLPC in Brazil

December 7, 2006
By Digital Trends

Intel Corporation has announced an agreement with the government of Brazil to donate 700 to 800 of its $400 Classmate PC laptops for use in a large-scale evaluation in Brazilian schools. Intel has already conducted small scale tests of the systems in poor areaas of Campinas (near Sao Paolo), but the agreement marks the first time the company has inked an agreement with a government to test systems.

Intel's Classmate PC is a key component of Intel's World Ahead program aimed at development markets; it's a lightweight, ruggedized laptop computer with a 7-inch color screen, Wi-Fi networking, and flash memory instead of a hard drive for storage.

The announcement comes just a month after Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva received a prototype OLPC from the non-profit One Laptop Per Child project, which just had its first 1,000 units roll off the assembly line at China's Quanta for testing. Intel's Classmate systems are more powerful than the OLPC system—sporting more memory and storage, as well as a faster processor—but will have a per-unit cost in the $400 range, as opposed to roughly $150 for the OLPC. The costs for both systems will likely decline if orders (and, hence, manufacturing capacity) increase. Intel's Classmate PC systems can run either Windows or Linux; OLPC systems run Linux.

In a way, competition from Intel is a validation of the One Laptop Per Child project. The OLPC project was launched, in part, to awaken the technology industry to the fact it had, collectively, been ignoring a vast portion of the world's population and helping create and sustain a technological and cultural elite. Intel's interest in offering inexpensive computing and information technology resources to developing nations underscores the validity of the OLPC project…even if, so far, Intel isn't willing to undercut its prices.

Posted by ana at 11:09 AM

November 29, 2006

CPM is listed among the 100 largest IT providers in the international financial market

Press Release
By CPM

CPM, one of the top technology companies in Brazil, has just been included by American Banker and by the research firm Financial Insights – a company belonging to the IDC Group – in the FinTech 100, an annual international ranking of the major technology suppliers to the financial sector. It is the first time that a Latin American organization has been mentioned on the list.

“CPM’s inclusion in this ranking is an acknowledgement of our value proposition, which combines experience and business knowledge to provide outstanding performance as an IT provider to the financial services sector, both locally and internationally,” says Maurício Minas, CPM’s Senior Vice-President Finance.

The ranking is categorized and assessed based on the annual invoicing announced by the companies, as well as the percentage of invoicing attributed to financial services. Overall invoicing was a key factor in the assessment, attesting to the stability of the companies and their importance to the industry.

In addition, all the categories included in this list assess the companies’ performance in relation to applications specific to banking operations, such as core banking, branches, ATMs, credit cards, credit transactions, online banking, billing, cash management, treasury, and funds transfers.

Other international recognition

CPM is currently the largest Brazilian IT services company not associated with multinational groups, based on invoicing, according to the IDC study entitled Brazil Semiannual IT Services Tracker 2006. In this same study, CPM was classified as the third largest IT consulting company in Brazil.

In February of this year, it was cited by Neo IT, in conjunction with Global Services, as the second largest IT service provider in Latin America, one of the Top 10 global companies in developing specialized applications and Top 100 global IT providers, solidifying its image among sector leaders globally.

With its eye on the global market, in 2005 CPM expanded its activities overseas, with its focus on nearshore outsourcing. It consolidated its international operations by marketing services and was one of the largest Brazilian exporters of software during the period, with a total of US$18.4 million in new contracts and a growth of 148% in the global market as compared to 2004.

Posted by ana at 02:10 PM

November 20, 2006

SMBs in Brazil to Spend US$260M on IT Security in 2007

Business Wire
Press Release
By AMI-Partners

NEW YORK--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Small and medium businesses (1-999 employees) in Brazil are on track to spend more than US$260 million next year on IT security solutions. Much of this growth will come from medium businesses (100-999 employees) who account for more than 60% of all IT security spending. This is according to the latest study from Access Markets International (AMI) Partners, Inc. "SMBs across Brazil need to strengthen their IT security all the more due to the increasing threat of cybercrime," said Yedda Chew, New York-based research analyst at AMI-Partners. "Their vulnerability to electronic threats doesn't depend upon their geographical location anymore."

Another study from AMI-Partners revealed that 72% of Brazil-based MBs cited enhanced data security and privacy as a key factor. This has boosted the demand for anti-virus and security applications, resulting in high anti-virus software penetration. Moreover, as major investments continue to expand Brazil's IT infrastructure, SMBs are aggressively adopting broadband.

"While spending on basic anti-virus and firewall applications will continue, SMBs in Brazil are increasingly recognizing the necessity of deploying advanced security applications such as virtual private network (VPN) and intrusion detection/prevention software," Ms. Chew said. "Especially now, as businesses continually evolve toward Internet-based connectivity, VPNs are being viewed as an inexpensive and efficient method to connect multiple sites, private or public, securely."

As the trend toward Internet connectivity and centralized networking grows, VPN applications such as IPsec and SSL VPN are seen as being essential tools for MBs to deploy. Currently, close to 50% of Brazil's MBs have deployed a router/firewall appliance-based VPN located on site, while 24% plan to implement one in the next 12 months.

AMI estimates that nearly 3 million of Brazil's SMBs do not currently have an anti-virus solution installed on their PCs. IT vendors - such as the alliance between Avaya and Brasil Telecom - have recognized the importance of this market. They even started offering products and services designed to meet the functional and budgetary requirements of SMBs, such as "VPN Simple", for example. "This is a good start," Ms. Chew said. "However, in spite of the rapid growth in recent years of spending on IT security, there still remains a large untapped potential market in Brazil."

About the Study

AMI's 2005-2006 Brazil Small Business Overview and Comprehensive Market Opportunity Assessment and 2005-2006 Brazil Medium Business Overview and Comprehensive Market Opportunity Assessment studies highlight these and other major trends in the context of current/planned IT, Internet and communications usage and spending. Products and services covered include established and emerging hardware, software, applications and business process solutions. Based on AMI's annual surveys of SMBs across Brazil, the studies track a broad spectrum of issues pertaining to budgets, purchase behaviors, decision influencers, channel preferences, outsourcing, service and support. Also covered are detailed firmographics and critically important technology attitudes and strategic planning priorities. These data point to key opportunities and messaging hot buttons for vendors and service providers seeking to match their offerings to SB market requirements.

For more information about this study, AMI-Partners, or our global SMB research, please call AMI-Partners at 212-944-5100, e-mail ask_ami@ami-partners.com, or visit the AMI Web site at www.ami-partners.com.

About AMI-Partners

AMI-Partners specializes in IT, Internet, telecommunications and business services strategy, venture capital, and actionable market intelligence — focusing on global small and medium business (SMB) enterprises. The AMI-Partners mission is to empower clients for success with the highest quality data, business planning and "go-to-market" solutions. AMI was founded in 1996 under the name of Access Media International (USA), Inc. by Andy Bose, formerly group vice president at IDC. Since its inception, the firm has built a world-class management team, each with ten to fifteen years’ experience in IT, telecom, online communications or multimedia.

AMI-Partners has helped shape the go-to-market SMB strategies of more than 150 leading IT, Internet, telecommunications and business services companies over the last ten years. The firm is well known for its IT and Internet adoption-based segmentation of the SMB markets; its annual retainership services based on global SMB tracking surveys in more than 20 countries; and its proprietary database of SMBs and SMB channel partners in the Americas, Europe and Asia-Pacific. The firm invests significantly in collecting survey-based information from several thousand SMBs annually, and is considered the premier source for global SMB trends and analysis.

Posted by ana at 10:58 AM

November 10, 2006

Microsoft bets on fast Xbox growth in Brazil

November 9, 2006
Reuters

SAO PAULO, Brazil, Nov 9 (Reuters) - Microsoft is going to start selling its Xbox 360 video game console in Brazil next month after years of planning, a company official said on Thursday.

Daniel Cervantes, director of Microsoft's Latin America games and entertainment division, predicted that Brazil's market could be Microsoft's biggest in Latin America for the Xbox 360 in the next five years. Microsoft started selling the console in Mexico, Chile and Colombia earlier this year.

Cervantes said 500,000 to 600,000 video game consoles are sold annually in Brazil, but they are brought there by third party vendors, not manufacturers. Analysts say there is a user base in Brazil for about 11 million game machines.

"We'll be the first major manufacturer to sell a game console in Brazil's market directly. We believe consumers will respond well to that," said Cervantes, adding that Brazil ranked 15 in the world in console sales.

The company will be selling the Xbox for 2,999 reais ($1,399) in stores and on Web sites, but product brought to Brazil unofficially by third parties can be found for between 1,600 reais and 1,900 reais.

Cervantes said Microsoft considers its price "very competitive" in view of the package it will sell, which includes the console, a 20-gigabyte hard disk, wireless controller, remote control and three games.

The Brazilian Xbox 360 will have software in Portuguese.

Microsoft hopes to sell 10 million Xbox 360s globally in 2006, about 10 percent of which will come from Latin America, said Cervantes. He did not say how many sales were expected in Brazil.

Microsoft will have 14 games for the Brazilian launch, among them the much anticipated "Gears of Wars," and "Perfect Dark Zero", at a cost of 159 reais each.

Cervantes said Microsoft would spend twice as much on publicity in Brazil as it did for its Mexico launch, but he declined to give specific figures. He said the company wanted to start selling in Brazil as soon as possible because 40 percent of its consoles sales for the year were in December.

Microsoft wants to take advantage of being the first to sell a new generation console in Brazil because starting this month it will face competition from Nintendo's console Wii and Sony's machine PlayStation 3.

"We have learned in Mexico and Colombia that when we come ahead of our competitors, our market share can double just by being the first. If we get a critical mass, it's very difficult for us lose our lead," said Cervantes.

Posted by ana at 12:57 PM

November 09, 2006

Back-office Offshoring Could Save $58 Billion Annually for Fortune 500 Companies

November 9, 2006
Global Services

The Fortune 500 could potentially save $58 billion annually or over $116 million on an average per company, by offshoring many of their back-office activities, according to research by The Hackett Group, a strategic advisory firm.

Advances in technology, along with increasingly educated global work forces, enable the portability of business-support activities across Information Technology (IT), finance, human resources (HR) and procurement to take advantage of labor arbitrage. Hackett estimates that the increased use of offshore resources may impact up to 1.47 million General and Administrative (G&A) jobs or nearly 3,000 at a typical Fortune 500 company.

According to Hackett’s research, globalization has created an environment where executives must constantly re-evaluate their cost structures for G&A operations against a new host of emerging global resources. Hackett also found that the best companies are strategically improving performance in finance, IT, HR, procurement, working capital and other areas in ways that help them respond to the pressures of globalization.

However, many companies are relying on outdated sourcing analysis techniques that lead them to materially underestimate the benefit available through offshoring back-office operations. With labor-arbitrage savings nearing 60%, Hackett finds that executives must analyze their process-optimization opportunities to capture the potential value of centralization.

Many organizations fail to examine the characteristics of business processes, allowing activities that provide no competitive advantage to remain decentralized in industrialized countries at a higher cost. Distributed activities are generally not portable, and therefore not included within the scope of a globalization initiative. The education base and skill sets available in India, China, The Philippines, Pakistan, Eastern Europe, Brazil and other emerging countries continues to expand, offering a new level of savings combined with improved quality and talent, significantly strengthening the business case for globalization.

Opportunities Extend Well Beyond IT

Hackett’s analysis of the Fortune 500 draws upon ongoing benchmark studies that have captured outsourcing costs since 1992. While IT represents the largest functional opportunity, significant savings can be generated in other G&A areas, including finance, HR and procurement. Hackett’s analysis of the savings opportunity breakdown for a typical Fortune 500 company is based upon the median number of full-time employees per process group, labor arbitrage cost differential and the potential degree for offshoring by process group.

Hackett estimates that each company, on an average, will save $58.5 million in IT; $32.1 million in Finance; $15.6 million in HR; and $9.9 million in procurement, resulting in a total cost saving of $116.1 million per annum. The report says that the initiatives will impact, on an average, 1,223 staff in IT; 1,045 in finance; 390 in HR; and 275 in procurement — 2,933 per company.

Posted by ana at 12:36 PM

Around the world: An awful lot of outsourcing in Brazil

November 8, 2006
Financial Times
By Tony Danby

Brazil has ambitious plans to join the world's top offshore IT outsourcing destinations by 2010. The move follows a joint initiative by the federal government and Brasscom, the software and IT service export association. It aims to tap into a global IT services market estimated to be worth more than $600bn. The country's fast-growing IT outsourcing market is expected to generate R$4.85bn this year up from R$4.08b last year, according to data by IDC, the consultant.

Antonio Gil, Brasscom's chairman and chief executive of CPM, a Brazilian IT company, says good progress was made in the first year with marketing activities to put Brazil on the radar screen as a potential IT outsourcing destination.

But he admits that in some areas – such as legislative reforms needed to create a level playing field with countries such as India – progress is slow.

Part of the reason was the recent presidential election, which focused politicians' minds on domestic politics, he suggests.

Still, Mr Gil is confident that Brasscom will meet its goal and points to a combination of factors that position Brazil as a suitable offshore destination for companies looking for an alternative to India.

He points to stable political conditions, a world-class financial sector, costs that, although higher than India, are lower than the US, as well as a similar time zone to North America.

Brazil's population of 182m also includes the largest Japanese community outside Japan, while large German and Italian communities provide a closer cultural affinity to customers in the wealthy north than many Asian countries.

Multinationals such as HP, IBM, Accenture and EDS were also quick to spot the potential and set up offshore hubs or software development centres primarily in the industrial São Paulo region.

One example of the growing trend came in September, when the Brazilian arm of Japanese insurance company Tokio Marine Seguradora signed a 10-year, $44m, contract with IBM locally to outsource its data centres and technological hardware upgrades.

João Pedro Paro Neto, Tokio Marine's director for alternative channels, says the company decided to outsource to IBM simple tasks such as unifying multiple websites, through to revamping hardware for its core business activities.

Even Indian IT service providers such as Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) and Infosys have set up local operations to compete with other international and local players operating in Brazil.

Faced by a barrage of international competition, local companies such as CPM, Politec and Stefanini IT Solutions, are furiously positioning themselves in the IT and software market.

To grab its share, Brasilia-based IT outsourcing company Politec delivers commoditised solutions such as application codes, helpdesk management and data centre monitoring.

"Standard IT services work, which is based on price, gives us an opportunity to build relationships and deliver more complex solutions later," said Humberto Riberto, executive vice- president at Politec.

The company aims to provide the full application life-cycle support in a four-year timeframe, said Mr Riberto. And like many local companies, it also launched a unit to build ties with the likes of German software giant SAP to deliver its products and services at home or abroad.

Politec, which expects to make sales of $230m in 2006, is spreading its net by setting up operations in the US, Japan and most recently a joint-venture with offshoring company Neusoft to provide coverage in China.

But even Brazil's supporters admit that its plans to become a global IT outsourcing giant need to overcome hurdles to compete against rival destinations in Asia, eastern Europe and elsewhere. Chief among these are the burdensome tax regulations and outdated employment laws.

Industry analysts also complain that IT laws have not kept pace with changing times and intellectual property regulations provide insufficient protection for software developers.

They also worry that insufficient training in IT and language skills overall will be a problem.

In the opinion of Cassio Dreyfuss, vice-president for research at Gartner, companies cannot afford to wait for the government to take over training and education. Any companies entering this market need to factor the training of employees into their costs.

The local unit of Indian company, TCS, for example, aims to grow to 1,800 employees by March 2007, compared with 1,100 today.

TCS is investing R$1.5m a year in training and recruitment, while establishing alliances with education institutions such as the University of São Paulo.

But, as in other countries, the domestic and international IT service suppliers have also learnt a lot in the past five years.

Alexandra Reis, management consultant at IDC, says that many companies learnt from their mistakes during past contracts. "An IT outsourcing contract was often like a black box, with neither side knowing exactly what was in it," she recalls.

Companies need to work closely with suppliers to avoid disputes, according to outsourcing specialists.

It is common to see clients discovering that their needs were not met by the IT service suppliers, while the suppliers felt companies did not clearly specify what they wanted, Ms Reis explained.

She also notes that careful planning by all departments is needed to avoid misunderstandings.

Companies must consider their objectives as early as possible, which may include productivity or future goals such as supporting a new product, she said.

Despite the challenge that Brazil faces to establish itself as a top-five IT outsourcing destination, local and international IT specialists talk of the mature level of technology and the improving quality of its IT outsourcing market.

Klaus Ehmke, finance director at TCS's Brazilian unit, believes Brazil is moving in the right direction to become a leading global destination.

He says it has many positive aspects, an important change being that local and international companies are increasingly securing industry benchmark certification and qualifications.

"They have the methodology and skills to handle complex work rather than just body-shopping," he adds.

Posted by ana at 12:10 PM

November 06, 2006

How Brazil Might be The Model For E-Voting Reform

November 6, 2006
Internetnews.com
By Michael Hickins

Electronic voting machines have come under heavy attack in the days leading up to next week's election, leaving voters with the uneasy feeling that the will of the people will not be respected. Deforest Soaries, the former chairman of the Elections Assistance Commission (EAC), says voters should be concerned.

According to Soaries, the guidelines published by the agency he once oversaw fail to ensure that voting machines are accurate and secure.

Now, he said, the federal government should right a wrong by taking responsibility for developing a prototype, rather than allowing vendors to create and sell inferior equipment to the states.

"There are some things that the federal government just must do and and therefore must see to it that they are done right," he told internetnews.com.

That might sound like a radical idea, but Ted Selker, a highly-regarded voting technology expert and co-director of the CalTech-MIT Voting Technology Project, noted that this is precisely how voting machines are developed and rolled out in Brazil.

Selker said that three separate government entities in Brazil are responsible for implementing voting technology in that country.

One government agency develops the specifications, one develops the software and a third does the testing.

Private-sector companies then bid for the opportunity to manufacture the equipment for general use.

"It's resulted in tremendous improvements in their processes and equipment," said Selker.

Selker suggested that a further improvement on this system would be to have three different software programs running simultaneously on each machine.

The different programs should each produce the same results, and if they didn't, the results of the outlier could be thrown out and an investigation launched.

"Diversity in the code gives you a more reliable and less hackable system," he said.

Selker also suggested a raft of measures that jurisdictions should take to improve voting security and accuracy.

He said the poll workers should never be left alone with a machine, and that at least two poll workers should be present when results are transmitted or transported for final tabulations.

He also said that parallel testing of machines be made a standard practice.

In parallel testing, randomly selected machines are taken out of service and undergo a simulated election under the same conditions as the real election taking place on the same date.

If the results produced by the machine don't match the ballots prepared by the auditors, then officials know that something is wrong with the software.

There are at least a half-dozen vendors of direct recording electronic voting machines (DREs) in the United States, the three largest of which are Diebold Election Systems, based in Allen, Texas, Election Systems and Software (ES&S), based in Omaha, Neb., and Sequoia Voting Systems, of Oakland, Calif.

Vendors estimate that DREs are currently in place in one-third of all polling stations in the United States.

DREs display ballots and record votes by means of touch screens and record voting data in both permanent and modular memory components.

Moreover, computer security experts have demonstrated that the machines are vulnerable to manipulation through the introduction of malware.

They have also discovered simple interfaces located at the rear of some models of DREs that can be used to change votes.

Other flaws have emerged in the machines in recent weeks, including votes that switch from one candidate to another, screens that freeze when the device memory overloads and truncated names on summary screens.

The irony is that all the machines have been certified by independent testing authorities using specifications and best practices published by the EAC last year.

Soaries said that the current system cannot inspire confidence.

One reason is that, as in many other industries, the vendors themselves pay the independent testing agencies (ITAs).

Soaries says that elections are too important to allow the appearance of a conflict of interest.

"If you come up with software or hardware that you want certified, I don't think you should be the person paying the ITA because the ITA considers you their client -- not the government, not the voter, not democracy," he said.

He also said that the standards published by the EAC fall flat because they merely prescribe a set of features to be tested, but do not prescribe expected results.

"It's not performance-based standards," he said.

But Soaries said that ultimately, the blame for poor standards lays with Congress, which he said failed to ever appropriate $30 million that they had promised to spend on researching the issue.

"Many of these machines that we're using were paid for by the federal government, which didn't take the time to do the proper research in advance to say if your machine can't do this, doesn't do this, won't do that, then we won't buy it," Soaries said.

"Congress never appropriated one penny for research that was supposed to precede the creation of standards and the purchase of machines," he said.

Experts are keeping their fingers crossed that elections go smoothly on November 7.

But they're also hoping that, regardless of how the machines perform this time, steps are taken to improve their performance and reassure voters in the lead-up to the next presidential election two years hence.

"Hopefully there are going to be enough informed people this time to really insist that Congress not do a watered-down version of election reform but really get at the hard answers," Soaries said.

Posted by ana at 08:58 AM

October 10, 2006

Brazil IT sponsors Outsourcing and IT Services Marketplace at Gartner's ITxpo

October 8, 2006
Brazil IT
Press Release

Brazil IT, a group representing Brazilian Information Technology (IT) companies, appears for the third time at the Gartner Symposium/ITxpo 2006 in Orlando, October 8th-13th. The event is the largest conference in the world for IT businesses and professionals. Brazil IT is participating again as an Outsourcing and IT Services Marketplace sponsor. Brazil is one of the largest IT markets in the world, with 4,000 companies operating in this segment alone, with revenues of over $17 billion.

As part of its participation at the ITxpo, Brazil IT is hosting a success case presentation on innovation in the IT industry, focused on flex-fuel technology developed in Brazil. Three out of four cars sold in Brazil are flex-fuel, running on gasoline, ethanol or any mixture of both. This case study showcases Brazil's capacity in the IT sector, and the reason why the country is emerging as a key location for IT outsourcing.

The participation of Brazil IT in Gartner Symposium/ITxpo 2006 is part of a combined effort by government and the private sector to promote the country as the next destination for companies interested in outsourcing their IT operations. Today, it is estimated that Brazil exports less than 5% of its IT industry's production, or $ 400 million. Brazil IT is working with the goal of reaching at least $ 2 billion in IT products and services exports by the end of 2007.

To support this goal, the Brazilian government recently passed a law granting close to US$ 460 million in tax benefits and exemptions for IT companies all the way to 2014. The incentive should boost investment and lower operating costs. On the companies' side, the efforts include investment in R&D (expected to reach US$1 billion in 2006), the continuous pursuit of internationally recognized certifications and quality standards, participation in international trade shows and the opening of offices outside Brazil, mainly in the United States, to better serve their growing clientele.

"Brazil is widely known abroad for its music, its coffee and fashion, but we are determined to add to that," said Renata Sanchez, project manager for Apex-Brazil (the government's Trade and Investment Promotion Agency).. "The Brazilian domestic IT market is mature and exports are growing steadily. We are a highly technological country, with more than 20 IT clusters developing cutting-edge innovations in a wide range of sectors, notably healthcare, banking and e-gov."

Among the many reasons to believe Brazil is well placed to be a major player in the global IT industry she cited the growing number of qualified graduates entering the labor force, Brazil's proximity to the United States, business and cultural compatibility, a modern telecommunications infrastructure and cost advantages.

Brazil IT - Booths 101 and 104
Flex-fuel Technology: A Brazilian Innovation
October 10, 12:15 PM - 1:15 PM
Location: Dolphin / Oceanic 5

For more information, visit www.brazil-it.com. To schedule interviews with Brazilian IT executives participating in the Gartner Symposium/ITXpo 2006, contact Christine Studart at Brazil Information Center (202) 471-4020 or (240) 498-4250.

Posted by ana at 12:26 PM

Several companies represent Brazilian IT industry at Gartner's ITxpo

October 8, 2006
Brazil IT
Press Release

Brazil IT, a group representing Brazilian Information Technology (IT) companies, is sponsoring the Outsourcing and IT Services Marketplace at the Gartner Symposium/ITxpo 2006, in Orlando, October 8-13. Several of the leading companies with international presence represented by Brazil IT will have booths at the event: Actminds, Stefanini, Politec, Astrein, Educandus, Modulo, Certisign, DBA and B2BR.

Here is a brief description of each exhibitor:

Brazil IT - Booths 101 and 104
Brazil IT is a group of companies representing the Brazilian Information Technology (IT) industry. It is participating for the third time at the Gartner Symposium/ITxpo 2006, as an Outsourcing and IT Services Marketplace sponsor. Brazil is one of the largest it markets in the world, with 4,000 companies and revenues of over $17 billion. At Brazil IT's two booths on the ITxpo floor (101 and 104), specialized Brazil IT consultants and representatives from six companies will be on hand to meet with clients and present vertical solutions for Financial Services, Corporate Management and IT Security. The companies are:
1. Astrein has products for facilities, asset and maintenance management;
2. Educandus offers web based education software for elementary schools;
3. Modulo is the Latin American leader in information security, using PESI(r) - an ISO 9001-certified methodology conforming to the ISO 27001 standard;
4. Certisign, in operation since 1996, was one of the first digital certification companies in the world. The company is backed by venture investment from VeriSign, Intel Capital, Darby Technology Ventures (Franklin Templeton's venture capital arm) and is a leading provider in digital certification
5. DBA has launched the first pure Offshore Delivery Center (ODC) in Latin America. An ODC must meet a series of singular requirements. The company is CMM level 3 certified and is participating on the development of the new Carnegie Mellon's eSourcing Capability Model (eSCM).
6. B2BR is a solutions integration company, part of the TBA Group, proving a full fledge of IT services, from infrastructure outsourcing to Application developing and IT consulting.

Actminds - Booth 100
Focused on Application Development Outsourcing and Application Management Outsourcing, Actminds is a global IT services provider led by a team of highly qualified and certified professionals (CMMI-4 and PMI). Its strengths are methodology and process, in-depth understanding of technology and business, as well as flexibility and adaptability to our client's needs. Actminds' clients include Johnson & Johnson, BankBoston, Goldman Sachs, Lucent Technologies, General Motors and Volkswagen.

Stefanini - Booth 102
With 18 years of experience serving clients in the United States, Latin America and Europe, Stefanini delivers IT services on time and on budget. Its portfolio includes custom application development and maintenance, and infrastructure projects. Stefanini is the first Brazilian company to achieve CMMI-5. The company serves clients in a number of industry sectors, such as telecom, financial, oil & gas and pharmaceutical. Some of its clients are Whirlpool, Johnson & Johnson and Clorox.

Politec - Booth 103
In its 36 years of activities, Politec has become one of the largest IT services provider in Brazil, with CMMI-5 certification and 6,000 people in 15 R&D centers and 15 offices domestically and abroad. Its portfolio includes application maintenance, software development, systems integration, legacy transformation, IT staff augmentation, help desk and environment monitoring. Politec's clients include the U.S. Department of State, FBI, Executive Office of the President of Brazil, Petrobras, Metlife and Microsoft.

For more information, visit www.brazil-it.com. To schedule interviews with Brazilian IT executives participating in the Gartner Symposium/ITXpo 2006, contact Christine Studart at Brazil Information Center (202) 471-4020 or (240) 498-4250.

Posted by ana at 12:20 PM

Brazil presents IT innovations in flex-fuel car technology at Gartner's ITxpo 2006

October 8, 2006
Brazil IT
Press Release

Brazil IT, a group representing Brazilian Information Technology (IT) companies, is hosting a presentation at the Gartner Symposium/ITxpo 2006, in Orlando, October 8-13, demonstrating how innovation in the IT industry has helped Brazil achieve global recognition for its flex-fuel car technologies. Today, three out of four automobiles sold in Brazil are flex-fuel vehicles, running on gasoline, ethanol or any mixture of both, thanks to a unique embedded software which is less costly and more effective than solutions on the market today in many developed countries.

"This case study shows Brazil's capacity for innovation in the IT sector, and why the country is emerging as a key location for outsourcing", says Fernando Damasceno, chief engineer at the Brazilian unit of Italian car parts company Magneti Marelli, who will present his solution at Brazil IT's Solution Provider Session, on Tuesday, Oct. 10th. Damasceno will be interviewed by Gartner analyst Michael Maoz.

Damasceno, a Brazilian engineer, led the team that created the IT solution that constantly calculates the mixture of fuels in the car's tank and adjusts the engine to perform accordingly. In 2002, his team sold the software to Volkswagen, which introduced the first flex-fuel car in Brazil the next year. Damasceno's black box is now a part of cars sold by the five largest car makers in the country, including Volkswagen, Ford and GM.

Brazilian engineers started developing the technology behind flex-fuel cars in the 1990s based on their prior experience with ethanol-only vehicles during the 1970s, when Brazil's government helped fund the R&D effort which would lead to massive production of ethanol-fueled cars in response to the international oil crisis. In essence, the difference to the American technology is that the Brazilian flex-fuel injection system is cheaper, smarter and not limited to certain types of fuel or fuel mixes. Cars can run on gasoline, ethanol, or any mixture of both.

Today there are an estimated one million flex-fuel automobiles operating in Brazil, and that number is expected to grow fivefold in 8 years. E100 fuel (or pure ethanol) is sold at all of Brazil's 30,000 service stations. Annual production is in the range of four billion gallons, of which around 690 million gallons are exported. Ethanol accounts for about 40% of the fuel consumed by passenger vehicles, which means that for most Brazilian drivers, the only real issue between gasoline and ethanol is which is cheaper at the pump.

Brazilian engineers are continuing their work. Bosch's subsidiary in Brazil has created a new technology that allows cars to be powered by natural gas, in addition to gasoline and ethanol. Moreover, last June Magneti Marelli and Fiat launched the first vehicle to run on pure gasoline, Brazilian gasoline (mixed with alcohol), ethanol or natural gas. The Tetrafuel technology is also the results of Mr. Damasceno's R&D efforts.

Brazil IT - Booths 101 and 104
Flex-fuel Technology: A Brazilian Innovation
October 10, 12:15 PM - 1:15 PM
Location: Dolphin / Oceanic 5

For more information, visit www.brazil-it.com. To schedule interviews with Brazilian IT executives participating in the Gartner Symposium/ITXpo 2006, contact Christine Studart at Brazil Information Center (202) 471-4020 or (240) 498-4250.

Posted by ana at 12:13 PM

October 02, 2006

Information technology sector investment may reach US$ 460 mn in 2007, says minister

Agência Brasil
October 2, 2006

Enactment of the Brazilian information technology law, which forecasts exemption of the Industrialized Product Tax (IPI) in some states and an 95% reduction in others until 2014, among other incentives, should boost sector investment from the current R$ 600 million (275 million) to R$ 1 billion (US$ 460 million) by 2007. To the minister, the loss of income from the taxes should be compensated by greater sector revenues.

With the approval of the Information Technology Law, the minister of Science and Technology of Brazil, Sérgio Rezende, forecasts an increase in investment by sector companies, which may rise as high as R$ 1 billion (around US$ 460 million) by 2007. This year, according to him, the investment should total R$ 600 million (US$ 275 million).

The law was approved in 2004 and regulated last Monday (25), in a decree signed by Brazilian president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, which extended the sectors tax breaks from 2009 to 2019. Around 300 companies should be benefited, a figure that, according to the ministry, represents the main companies in the sector.

According to a spokesperson for the Presidency of the Republic, the law forecasts, for example, exemption of the Industrialized Product Tax (IPI) up to 2014 for companies in the North, Northeast and Midwest of the country, and 95% reduction of the same tax for companies in the South and Southeast of Brazil.

To obtain the incentives, companies in development or protection of information technology goods and services or in automation will have to invest 5% of revenues with products benefited by the law. "This makes the company's investment more real," evaluated the minister. Those who do not invest will turn the 5% to the National Fund for Scientific and Technological Development, plus an extra 12%.

Rezende estimates that tax breaks due to benefits will be around R$ 1 billion (US$ 460 million). However, the government forecast is that the reduction in revenues will be compensated by an increase in sector productivity.

A study by the ministry points out that between 1993 and 2003, the government lost R$ 5.1 billion (US$ 2.3 billion - the fruit of previous information technology regulations that also forecasted tax breaks). However, sector revenues in the period totalled R$ 10.9 billion (US$ 5 billion).

Current revenues of the national information technology industry total R$ 30 billion (US$ 13.8 billion), of which R$ 18.5 billion (US$ 8.5 billion) come from products that fit into the information technology law.

*Translated by Mark Ament

Posted by ana at 12:15 PM

September 29, 2006

Intel's Barrett helping Brazil go wireless

Philanthropy, commercial interests converge in Amazon rainforest

September 28, 2006
CNBC

This island community rises like a mirage in the middle of the Amazon River, an arduous 12-mile boat ride from the nearest Brazilian city.

Intel Chairman Craig Barrett traveled here recently as part of a billion-dollar effort to deliver personal computers and wireless Internet connections to places and people who before could only dream of access to the information and knowledge that the tools provide.

Under Barrett's leadership, Intel has been a generous and consistent corporate backer of science and education.

"We've had a long history of involvement with the education of young people, and think that every child around the world ought to have the same opportunities," Barrett says.

While there's clearly a philanthropic angle, the initiative should also advance Intel's emerging WiMax technology for beaming network signals up to 30 miles. Barrett says the Parintins project is the first in a series of public-private partnerships designed to bring wireless technologies to emerging markets.

Barrett was preceded to Parintins -- a town of 114,000 residents and accessible only by boat or plane -- by technicians from Intel and Silicon Valley allies Cisco and Proxim, as well as Brazilian partners, who installed a high-speed wireless computer network on the island.

"We're interested in growing the Internet," Barrett says. "We've got our first billion people on the Internet. What better place to demonstrate what technology can do than in the middle of the Amazon rainforest?"

Residents hailed the arrival of the digital age by throwing a party for Barrett featuring traditional Amazonian music and dance celebrating the rhythms of life along the river, an event that evoked the annual boi-bumba festival that draws tourists from around the world to Parintins.

Wireless technology will revolutionize communications along the river. And high-speed Internet access will put the town's 30 doctors in touch with medical specialists in Brazil's major metropolitan areas. Instead of sending patients away for treatment by specialists, the local doctors can use the Internet to become specialists themselves.

"Doctors here don't have access to the latest information," says Dr. Francisco Tussolini, the local health secretary. "With this tool, with telemedicine, they'll be able to discover diseases much sooner than they can today."

Give a Parintins grade-schooler a personal computer and you'll soon have a hard time separating the student from the machine. "I like to draw," says a 9-year-old girl named Rebecca as she demonstrates her technique on one of the computers recently introduced to her tiny school.

Computers linked to the Internet give Rebecca and her classmates opportunities that children in more affluent communities enjoy, Barrett says. "We can talk about it or do something about it, and in Parintins we're doing something about it," he adds.

Barrett, who visits 30 countries a year, says his rainforest visit brings immense personal satisfaction, and serves as a vivid reminder of power of technology to improve lives.

Posted by ana at 11:16 AM

September 27, 2006

Latin America private equity interest seen gaining

September 27, 2006
Reuters
By Herbert Lash

Private equity and venture capital interest in Latin America is picking up, with some data suggesting investment in 2006 is outstripping the pace of recent years after a period of investor indifference.

Investment in the first six months of this year was $1.54 billion in Latin America, more than the $1.02 billion invested all of last year and $609 million in 2004, according to Emerging Markets Private Equity Association (EMPEA)

Returns also have picked up after years of decline, and the best-managed funds are posting one-year returns of about 50 percent, said Sarah Alexander, executive director of EMPEA.

Several initial public offerings in Brazil this year, in tandem with Google Inc.'s acquisition last year from Brazilian venture firm Fir Capital of Akwan Information Technologies Inc., should be snapping investors out of their apathy toward Latin America, observers say.

"This is going to be a wake-up call for people who had forgotten about the region," said Umberto Pisoni, senior investment officer in charge of private equity investing in Latin America for the International Finance Corp.

Many private equity funds were unable to recoup their investments as initial public offerings were put on hold after the technology bubble burst and slammed equity markets.

The internal rates of return for funds that had invested in electricity distributor Equatorial Energia SA and business software provider Totvs SA topped 200 percent, Pisoni said in an interview last week. The two Brazilian companies went public this year.

Some of the best-managed private equity firms have internal rates of return of about 40 percent, although the average for Latin America has been in single digits or mid-teens, he said.

Fund raising for emerging market private equity more than tripled in 2005 to $22.1 billion from $5.8 billion the previous year, but the bulk, about $15.5 billion, went to Asia, less Japan, Australia and New Zealand, Alexander said. She spoke during a presentation in New York on Monday of the Brazilian Association of Venture Capital and Private Equity.

Latin America attracted $1.3 billion last year, or less than half the funds raised for Central Europe and Russia at about $2.7 billion each, the Washington-based association said.

The outlook for Latin America is clearly changing, she said.

The return of the IPO market and the strengthening of investor rights has helped reignite investor interest in Latin America, Julio Lastres, senior managing director, Americas, at Darby Overseas Investments Ltd., a unit of Franklin Resources Inc. , said in an interview on Friday.

Corporate governance has improved in Latin America, while in Brazil the Novo Mercado stock market eliminated non-voting shares, bolstering investor rights.

Economic stability in Brazil and Mexico after currency crises in those two countries put a crunch on investment returns in dollars, and the increased sophistication of local bond markets for mid-tier companies, along with lower interest rates, has also helped, Lastres said.

The change in investor interest marks a contrast with the dry years after the economic downturn following the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001 and the bursting of the technology bubble.

"We were pretty much not raising a lot of money when you saw a pick-up in 2004, then greater pick-up in 2005. This year will show a considerable pick-up as well," Lastres said.

"Some of the risk that was embedded in financing companies back in the 1990s, in foreign currencies, is no longer there," he said.

Posted by ana at 12:33 PM

The giant of South America is weaning itself from oil and bringing the Net to the poor

September 27, 2006
Technology Review Magazine
By Laura Somoggi

Brazil's two top priorities are to reduce dependence on imported energy sources and to bring digital technologies to the vast majority of the country's 180 million people who cannot now afford them.

In energy, the center of the greatest activity is biodiesel, a fuel made from the oil of seeds such as soybeans, castor beans, and cottonseed. Biodiesel could become an attractive, domestically produced alternative to petroleum-based fuels. Brazil has enacted a law requiring diesel oil sold in the country to be 2 percent biodiesel by 2008 and 5 percent biodiesel by 2013. Because the country has huge amounts of land that is unsuited for food crops but that can easily grow oil seeds, "Brazil can become a global biodiesel power," says Maria das Graças Foster, secretary of oil, gas, and renewable energy at the Ministry of Mines and Energy.

The consequences could be considerable. Brazil now imports 15 percent of the 37 billion liters of diesel it consumes annually. Large-scale use of biodiesel fuels would allow it to all but discontinue those imports and would create jobs in needy farming communities. There are also significant environmental benefits: substituting biodiesel for petroleum-based fuels reduces emissions of unburned hydrocarbons, carbon monoxide, sulfates, sulfur, and other pollutants.

Another alternative fuel that could help Brazil reduce its oil dependence is ethanol from sugarcane. A study conducted by Roberto Giannetti da Fonseca, a spe­cialist in foreign trade, found that Brazil is the largest producer of fuel ethanol in the world, with an export potential of up to 10 billion liters per year for about $2 billion in revenue. Because of its extensive use of ethanol fuel, Brazil has developed the flex-fuel car, which features a combustion engine that can burn ethanol, gasoline, or any combination of both. Volkswagen introduced the car in Brazil in March 2003. Last year, sales of new flex-fuel or ethanol vehicles amounted to 26 percent of overall car sales. According to Booz Allen estimates, that fraction could rise to 40 percent within the next two years, and Brazil could begin to export the flex-fuel technology. "Thanks to this technology, Brazil will be dependent on neither oil nor ethanol," says Fernando Reinach, executive director of Votorantim Novos Negócios, the venture capital subsidiary of the Votorantimi Group, a major Brazilian industrial conglomerate.

While reducing energy dependence will help the Brazilian economy in the long run, another technological initiative is starting to have more-im­­mediate consequences. Only about 12 percent of Brazilians own PCs. The last few years have seen a number of projects designed to make computer technology accessible to large numbers of Brazilians for whom it was previously unaffordable. The Committee for Democracy in Information Technology (CDI), for example, collects PCs in good working condition that businesses have discarded as obsolete and ships them to information-technology training centers. More than 900 schools in Brazil and abroad have bene­fited from this program.

In 2001, a new project was born, one intended to provide Brazilians who don't own PCs with a sort of virtual machine—as long as they have access to a publicly shared computer terminal.The project is called Computador de R$1.00, or Computers for 1 Real—the equivalent of about 40 cents. That's the price of a recordable CD that stores personal data and settings that customize the appearance of a computer screen. The user simply inserts the disc into the CD drive of a computer at a school, a public library, or even a shopping mall. The system reads the disc and presents a personalized computing environment, complete with application software and access to additional content over the Internet. The system is already in place in pilot form in community centers and schools in cities such as São Paulo, Brasília, and Campinas; hundreds of Brazilian schools will soon begin offering system discs to their students. Project col­laborators include Siemens, T-Systems, Brasil Telecom, Brasília University, publisher Editora Abril, and Brazilian infotech firm Samurai.

One application of information technology in which Brazil is taking a leading role is voting machines. In Brazil's 2000 local elections, for the first time, all 5,559 of its municipal districts offered voters the chance to cast their ballots electronically. Most polling places used a simple, portable electronic voting machine. To boost confidence in the system's reliability, Brazilian law guarantees that all political parties can examine the machine's software before the election, says Paulo César Bhering Camarão, information tech­nology secretary of the Supreme Electoral Court. A digital signature extracted from the software can then be used to verify that the program used on election day is the same one examined previously.

Laura Somoggi is editor of Harvard Business Review Latin America.

Posted by ana at 12:06 PM

IBM Opens Latin America's First Specialized, High Performance Software and Services Lab in Brazil

September 5, 2006
IBM

IBM announced today the opening of a multi-million dollar, high performance software and services laboratory in Sao Paulo, Brazil.

The first of its kind on the continent, the High Performance On Demand Solutions Lab (HiPODS) is designed to support the growth of business across the emerging markets of Latin America by finding answers to the most vexing business and technology questions. The Brazil lab joins a global grid of six specialized IBM facilities to deliver a growing range of software lab services, including the recently opened HiPODS labs in China and India, as well as Japan, the UK and the United States.

The lab provides businesses access to servers, storage, and more importantly, high-value skills from IBM's top talent in Brazil and around the world, depending on the specific needs of the client. The IBM teams build custom solutions to drive automation, virtualization and standards into clients' business and IT infrastructures.

"We are bringing IBM's deepest software and consulting capabilities into the heart of our fast-growing client base in Brazil and to the accelerating economies across Latin America," said Steve Mills, senior vice president and group executive, IBM Software, in attendance to open the lab. "This lab will help local clients by providing a network of worldwide high-value solutions to transform their businesses."

Additionally, IBM's six HiPODS labs act as a gateway for clients to tap into the know-how of tens of thousands of IBMers and Business Partners at hundreds of software, services and research labs around the world. The lab brings IBM's deep business insights, technology know-how and vast experience of simplifying complex IT implementations to clients.

Global Innovation Grid: Harnessing the Power of the Globally Integrated IBM

The HiPODS lab is connected using a Global Innovation Grid. The grid allows IBM to create a project team in minutes, assign servers and storage for a project in less than an hour, dynamically provision software components, connect global talent pool teams through blogs and wikis and most importantly reuse assets developed for one client with hundreds of other global clients anywhere in the world.

This Global Innovation Grid creates a faster path to innovation for customers as it allows them to focus on implementing new technologies rather than worrying about the infrastructure challenges of major IT projects.

By design, lab collaboration extends and validates new technologies in real world usage, while customers gain access to proven innovations. For example, the HiPODS lab has developed a Web-based service for evaluating the performance of workloads based on Service Oriented Architecture, or SOA, for common scenarios such as banking, travel booking and insurance claims handling. This HiPODS developed service is available in IBM's SOA Business Catalog, a single, comprehensive online directory of hundreds of reusable SOA assets from IBM and business partners. Providing the ability to take people-based processes and turn them into more flexible, reusable software components made possible by SOA becomes critical.

Building "Smarts" Into IT and Business Infrastructures

Customers can bring their applications to this dynamic infrastructure lab to validate their performance, scalability and solutions needs before deploying them in a business environment. The specialists at the HiPODS lab also work with customers to tune their software to facilitate optimal performance and to develop customized solutions. With a strong double-digit year-to-year revenue growth, IBM Brazil will have no shortage of customers to serve.

"With significant growth in the overall economy comes the need for sophisticated IT capabilities that can scale up to sustain rapidly expanding and shifting workloads," said Willy Chiu, vice president, High Performance On Demand Solutions at IBM. "Through automation and virtualization, IBM HiPODS can help clients extend their IT performance by wringing the most out of their infrastructure, a critical foundation for growth. This new lab is essentially a gateway for Latin American clients to access the intellectual capital, business insight and real world experience of IBM's hundreds of software, services and research labs around the world."

"IBM's new Brazil HiPODS lab is a very encouraging development for Latin American technology and business overall," said Tarquinio Teles, CEO of Brazilian online game developer Hoplon Infotainment SA. "At Hoplon, we are going through a transformation right now from a regional independent game company to a global provider of environments for Massive Multi-Player Online Gaming. This means we have a two-fold challenge: for our TaikoDom sci-fi/space game to adapt to a diverse, global audience, and now for our own environment infrastructure to meet global scaling demands. On both counts, we will need the kind of specialized SOA insight and high performance testing that the IBM lab can provide."

HiPODS Labs Around the World

IBM's six HiPODS Labs are located in Brazil (Sao Paolo), China (Beijing); India (Bangalore), Japan (Yamato); the UK (Hursley) and the United States (San Jose, CA). These labs are responsible for facilitating billions of transactions every day from the company's many high volume customer engagements. IBM is responsible for creating and managing some of the world's most complex Internet infrastructures for leading global companies.

The opening of this laboratory demonstrates IBM's long-standing commitment to deliver innovative solutions in the region. In 2005, IBM moved its Latin American headquarters from Miami to Sao Paulo. IBM Brazil, established in 1917, was IBM's first operation outside the U.S.

Posted by ana at 10:38 AM

June 30, 2006

Brazilian companies to attend Gartner: Gartner Financial Technology Summit in Boston

June, 27 2006

Eight Brazilian companies specialized in developing solutions for the financial sector will attend, on August 28-31, the Gartner Financial Services Technology Summit first edition in Boston. The initiative is part of the Sectorial Project for the Export of Software and Related Services - (PSI-SW), developed in a joint effort with APEX-Brasil (Brazilian Export and Investments Promotion Agency) and SOFTEX (Society for the Promotion of Excellence in Brazilian Software). PSI-SW is the biggest and most comprehensive software and service export plan ever implemented in Brazil, comprised of more than 100 affiliated companies. Its goal is to increase the exports in at least US$ 16 million until the end of the year.

"It is important to remember that the Financial Services segment has an exceptional growth potential, with an estimated IT global spending of US$ 430 billion in 2007, according to Gartner Group researches," says Jose Carlos Cusnir, international business manager, SOFTEX. For him, an increase, even a minimal one, of the Brazilian share would bring highly expressive results.

"Today Brazil answers for 3.4% of the IT market in the financial segment. If we are able to capture more 0.6%, we will have access to a US$ 2.2 billion business," affirms Cusnir, who sees great business opportunities for Brazil in Information Technology Outsourcing (ITO) and Business Process Outsourcing (BPO).

The Brazilian delegation is comprised by ACS, BRQ, CPM, DBA, Politec, Stefanini, YKP and YMF. "We have gather together skilled companies, many of them with offices abroad, because the event is an opportunity window to sell the "technological Brazil" concept, presenting success cases and state-of-the-art technologies for a highly qualified and decision-maker audience," comments Jose Carlos Cusnir, who also thinks that is crucial to take advantage of the moment to exchange opinions with Gartner consultants about the Brazilian software industry. "Indian and Irish companies, important players in this segment, will also attend the event," he notes.

Gartner Financial Services Technology Summit is a conference targeted to CEOs, CFOs, CIOs and executives at the IT industry, banks and insurance companies, which goal is to bring a vision of the technology's future, giving subsidies to face new scenarios and addressing complex technological issues. The organization expects to bring 400 speakers. Representatives of several institutions have already confirmed their participation, such as Bank of New York, JP Morgan Chase, Citigroup, HSBC, Chubb, Merrill Lynch and Wells Fargo.

Besides an extensive conference schedule, the event will hold a collective stand, Brazilian Software and Services - SOFTEX/APEX, where the visitors will be registered and referred to Brazilian company representatives.

"The software and related services industry has a strategic nature, since it develops advanced technologies and allows Brazil to compete in the same conditions as his competitors in the global market," says Juan Quiros, president, APEX-Brasil. For him, with the new Industrial, Technological and Foreign Trade Policy launched by the Brazilian administration last year, the segment has enjoyed a bigger support, because the companies now receive fiscal incentives and credit lines as instruments to expand their presence in the global market. "APEX has worked for three years to expand software and related services exports and has already invested R$10 million in initiatives that have benefited 197 companies," tells Quiros.

The next APEX initiative, together with SOFTEX, for the financial segment, is to attend the Midsize Enterprise Summit West 2005, that will be hold on September 18-21, 2005, in Salt Lake City, United States.

PROSPECTS OF GOOD DEALS AND NETWORKING

CPM, which goal is to export US$ 100 million in the next three years, believes that the event will be a success. "Brazil now is considered an upcoming country by Gartner and this, without a doubt, is a great incentive for the companies in the segment. The fact the event is focused on the financial services industry has motivated us even more, because this is the segment where Brazil has acquired stronger expertise. By uniting business knowledge, flexibility, competitive costs and the benefits of the nearshore model, we can offer great value for American companies. We expect to consolidate and expand business with our installed base and generate new business opportunities, besides positioning Brazil as the best choice for nearshore outsourcing solutions to American companies, mainly for banks, insurance companies and credit card operators," comments Ricardo Asse, new business manager, CPM.

"The financial market is highly demanding and needs a solid expertise. Some Brazilian companies, among them Stefanini, own enough know-how to leverage these opportunities with innovative and ingenious projects. We will use the Gartner Summit to approach potential costumers from the financial industry and visit our branch office in New York City, presenting our expertise in the sector," explains Marco Stefanini, the company president. The executive notes that the financial industry is strategic for Stefanini and answers for 40 % of the revenue. The company estimates that by the end of the year the foreign market share will reach 20 % of the revenue, rising to 50 % by 2009.

Yim King Po, president-director at YKP, is optimistic and foresees good business opportunities for integrated systems targeted to middle-size banks that the company intends to sell using they own infrastructure already in place in New York City. "YKP has a solid experience on services for the financial sector in Brazil. Based on the knowledge accumulated in 15 years of activity, we are prepared to offer innovative, high quality solutions, with a flexible infrastructure to meet the various requirements of demanding and exigent customers in the foreign market," he says.

"Companies such as Politec compete with big corporations in equal terms, and, in some cases, have some advantages over them. That's the case in the banking sector, where the local system sophistication have led IT companies to develop solutions considered innovative even by major world economies," comments Humberto Ribeiro, foreign business manager, who highlights the importance of global promotion initiatives that bring together companies capable of providing world class services.

For Benjamin Quadros, BRQ president, one of the majors technological service and solution providers for the Brazilian financial industry, attending the Gartner Financial Services Summit will provide a detailed vision on the American market and the technology future, besides allowing to meet the most acclaimed experts in the market, potential customers and partners. "We already have two customers in the United States and we are opening new business fronts. We hope to hold a competitive position in the software world market using the competitive advantage we have acquired for being one of most developed software and service industry for the financial sector all over the world," explains the executive.

"Despite not having a long-time tradition in the global market, the Brazilian banking technology industry is one of the most advanced in the world. The American market, specially, is huge and there are opportunities in several sectors, from retail banks to pension funds," says Paulo Mordehachvili, EVP and international business manager, DBA. According to Mordehachvili, the Gartner Financial Services Summit is a unique opportunity for Brazil to present itself for the companies that are looking for sourcing alternatives with the best cost-benefit.

According to Jose Eduardo Ribeiro Lima, Foreign Business Development manager at ACS, the financial and the telecommunication industries are the segment with biggest demand for business process outsourcing (BPO), including call center services. "ACS considers the financial industry one of its priority markets, either in Brazil or abroad, since the company has an operating infrastructure, state-of-the-art technology and non-stop processes usually required for services in this segment. We believe that the ACS call center services will complement the services by other companies that, together, will offer a complete set of IT solutions for the industry. We have big expectations regarding new contacts and potential customers," says the ACS manager.

"It's about time to connect the Brazil name with state-of-the-art technology," says Dajma Petit, deputy coordinator, SOFTEX. "And the best way to achieve this is obtaining recognition and asserting our competencies in sectors we are well positioned, such as banking automation. We are putting in practice an aggressive and systematic strategy that includes Brazilian companies participation in specific events, such as the Gartner Summit and actions to strengthen the relationship with foreigner opinion-makers who could testify the Brazilian IT industry reliability and competence," concludes Petit.

LEARN MORE ABOUT SOFTEX (www.softex.br) - Society for the Promotion of Excellence in Brazilian Software - SOFTEX - is a private, non-profit organization that develops entrepreneurship, readiness, financing and marketing initiatives in order to promote the Brazilian software and related services industry's competitiveness. The SOFTEX System has more than 1,300 members and maintains a regional agent network covering 23 cities in 13 Brazilian states.

LEARN MORE ABOUT APEX-BRASIL (www.apex.org.br) The Brazilian Export and Investments Promotion Agency - APEX - is an governmental agency focused on promoting Brazilian products and the country image abroad. APEX-Brasil is conducting 200 projects with entities representing 52 sectors of the industry. In its activities, APEX-Brasil uses the expanded concept of commercial promotion, embracing foreign trade management training, products and processes adjustment, even direct action in the foreign market, promoting Brazilian products at fairs and exhibitions, organizing business missions and business meetings abroad.

Posted by ana at 03:52 PM

June 07, 2006

Kodak to make digital cameras in Brazil

June 6, 2006
Reuters

SAO PAULO, Brazil - Eastman Kodak Co. (EK.N: Quote, Profile, Research) will start manufacturing digital cameras in Brazil, making the South American country the first place outside of China where the U.S. company will make digital equipment.

Kodak's Brazilian subsidiary said on Tuesday production will start later this month in Manaus, a bustling industrial hub in the heart of the Amazon, where electronics companies have long enjoyed generous tax breaks.

The first model to be produced will be the EasyShare C360, which comes with a 3x optical zoom lens and 5.0 megapixels.

Brazil is the largest market in Latin America for digital cameras, accounting for more than 40 percent of sales, Kodak said.

Posted by ana at 10:30 AM

May 23, 2006

SAP Global Service Center in Latin America to Meet Growing Local and Global Demand

May 23, 2006
SAP AG

SAO LEOPOLDO, Brazil - Expanding its presence in Brazil, SAP AG (NYSE: SAP) today announced the opening of a new SAP Global Service Center in Sao Leopoldo, state of Rio Grande do Sul, where SAP plans to add as many as 80 new employees by the end of 2006. Located on the "Unisinos" university campus, the new facility will focus on custom development and localization services for customers in Latin and North America.

The SAP Global Service Center is the latest addition to SAP's Brazilian operations, which started in 1995 and at present comprise more than 450 employees supporting more than 600 customers. Sao Leopoldo was chosen as the site of the new center based on a number of factors: the city's excellent infrastructure, cost competitiveness, proximity to higher educational institutions such as the facility host, University of Vale do Rio dos Sinos (Unisinos), and the strong support of the region through local government initiatives.

"I would like to express, on behalf of the state of Rio Grande do Sul and its scientific and technological community, our deep satisfaction with the decision made by SAP to deploy its SAP Global Service Center in our state," said Germano Rigotto, governor, state of Rio Grande do Sul. "It is a significant portion of, and a priority for, our public policies to develop technology centers and increasingly qualify our human resources in the corresponding areas. Therefore, the presence of a large global enterprise represents a sign that we are on the right track, and it will be an encouragement for the state of Rio Grande do Sul to become the focal point of other ventures."

Leveraging Global Network
The Sao Leopoldo site also serves as part of a worldwide network of nine SAP Global Service Center locations, the largest of which are in China, Germany, Hungary, India and Japan.

"The new SAP Global Service Center will support our long-term global growth plans and localization efforts and is an important affirmation of our commitment to Brazil and the Americas region," said Gerhard Oswald, member of the executive board, SAP AG. "SAP Custom Development and our Globalization Services team will benefit from the world-class IT and development professionals available in this region, and we are pleased to collaborate with Brazil's most prestigious universities and academic institutions to serve customers across the Americas and the rest of the world."

Boosting Global Competitiveness
SAP Custom Development helps individual customers seize new market opportunities and dynamically respond to new business challenges by developing unique, customer-specific solutions on the SAP NetWeaver(r) platform. Globalization services enable companies to run their systems simultaneously anywhere in the world. These services support both global processes and local business practices and laws.
"The SAP Custom Development and Globalization Services organizations play an essential role at SAP, as innovation and global competitiveness are paramount for the success of our customers and for SAP itself," said Jose Duarte, regional managing director of SAP Latin America. "This new SAP Global Service Center location marks an expansion for SAP in the Latin American market and contributes to the mission of supporting customers on a local and global basis. A strong university infrastructure that provides high-quality development resources, coupled with the region's high standard of living, fluency in English and Spanish and a competitive cost structure makes Sao Leopoldo a very attractive location for SAP."

About SAP
SAP is the world's leading provider of business software*. Today, more than 33,200 customers in more than 120 countries run SAP(r) applications-from distinct solutions addressing the needs of small and midsize enterprises to suite offerings for global organizations. Powered by the SAP NetWeaver(r) platform to drive innovation and enable business change, SAP software helps enterprises of all sizes around the world improve customer relationships, enhance partner collaboration and create efficiencies across their supply chains and business operations. SAP solution portfolios support the unique business processes of more than 25 industries, including high tech, retail, financial services, healthcare and the public sector. With subsidiaries in more than 50 countries, the company is listed on several exchanges, including the Frankfurt stock exchange and NYSE under the symbol "SAP." (Additional information at www.sap.com)

(*) SAP defines business software as comprising enterprise resource planning and related applications such as supply chain management, customer relationship management, product life-cycle management and supplier relationship management.
Any statements contained in this document that are not historical facts are forward-looking statements as defined in the U.S. Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Words such as "anticipate," "believe," "estimate," "expect," "forecast," "intend," "may," "plan," "project," "predict," "should" and "will" and similar expressions as they relate to SAP are intended to identify such forward-looking statements. SAP undertakes no obligation to publicly update or revise any forward-looking statements. All forward-looking statements are subject to various risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from expectations The factors that could affect SAP's future financial results are discussed more fully in SAP's filings with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission ("SEC"), including SAP's most recent Annual Report on Form 20-F filed with the SEC. Readers are cautioned not to place undue reliance on these forward-looking statements, which speak only as of their dates.
Copyright (c) 2006 SAP AG. All rights reserved.

SAP, R/3, mySAP, mySAP.com, xApps, xApp, SAP NetWeaver and other SAP products and services mentioned herein as well as their respective logos are trademarks or registered trademarks of SAP AG in Germany and in several other countries all over the world. All other product and service names mentioned are the trademarks of their respective companies. Data contained in this document serve informational purposes only. National product specifications may vary.

For customers interested in learning more about SAP products:
Global Customer Center: +49 180 534-34-24
United States Only: 1 (800) 872-1SAP (1-800-872-1727)

Posted by ana at 12:02 PM

May 15, 2006

Brazilian IT companies are awarded at Gartner's IT Channel Vision

May 15 2006

Orlando, FL - Brazil IT, a group of Brazilian information technology companies interested in doing more business in the U.S., won the award for "Best Enterprise Vendor Presentation" at IT ChannelVision, produced by Gartner in Orlando, from May 7th to 10th. This was the first time Brazil IT participated in the event that brought together around 300 international vendors and resellers for the American market. The award was given based on the choice of the audience of the boardroom presentations.

"We launched Brazil IT three years ago with the strategy of working our image in the American market. Since then, the interest of the audience has been growing and translated into an increasing participation in IT expos and fairs in the U.S. not only in terms of number of events attended but also of booth size," Renata Sanches, project manager for Apex, the government trade and investment promotion agency, says. The agency supports Brazil IT's actions with the goal of increasing international sales of Brazilian IT products and services. "This award given by Gartner - the leading in events, research and consulting in the technology industry - is the proof that we are going in the right direction."

During IT Channel Vision, Brazil IT sponsored boardrooms attended by buyers and decision-makers on invitation basis only. These presentations developed into more than 60 private meetings between American corporations and Brazilian vendors. Resellers, integrators, solution providers and consulting firms left the event with a higher interest in the South American country's software developers and services providers.

At the closing of the event, members of Brazilian IT industry received the "Best Enterprise Vendor Presentation" award alongside executives from major global players in the IT industry such as IBM and Intel. According to the boardroom's audience, Brazil IT's presentations were well structured and objective, with a strong focus on solutions for channels. In addition, they showed the creativity and expertise of Brazilian software developers and services providers.

The Brazil IT brand represents groups of companies from the main technology clusters in Brazil and individual corporations such as Stefanini and Politec. The project is coordinated by Brazil Information Center, an independent non-profit organization working in partnership with Apex to develop commercial projects in the U.S.

For more information, please contact Ana Martini, Brazil Information Center, at amartini@brazilinfocenter.org or (202) 471-4020.

Posted by ana at 04:27 PM

May 11, 2006

Brazilian companies take on Gartner's IT Channel Vision Summit

May 8th, 2006

ORLANDO, FL - Brazil-IT, a group of Brazilian technology information companies dedicated to growing market share in the United States, is participating for the first time in Gartner's IT Channel Vision Summit. During the three-day event -- that takes place in Orlando, Florida, from May 7th to 10th - leading software developers and service providers from Brazil will present their products and solutions to American System Builders, VARs, Enterprise Solution Providers and Home Integrators.

Hundreds of CIOs and decision-makers will attend IT Channel Vision in search of solutions for specific problems of their clients, service providers that aggregate value to their present services portfolio, outsourcing, in addition to box products and technological breakthroughs. Solutions to be highlighted by Brazil-IT at the event include complex systems integration, legacy transformation and migration, content management and more.

"Brazilian IT vendors are ready and eager to supply the American market demand. We offer cheap, creative and high qualified labor force; we have been a pioneer in software development for a broad array of industry sectors; and, best of all, we are only a nine-hour flight from the U.S.," says Renata Sanches, project manager at the Brazilian export agency APEX, which works with the IT sector in Brazil to raise awareness of the opportunities in IT exports as an engine for sector growth.

Since 2004, Brazil-IT -- supported by Apex, the Trade and Investment Promotion Agency - participates in Gartner's events in the U.S. with the objective of promoting the country as the next stop for American corporations interested in outsourcing software development and services providers abroad. The presence of Brazilian companies in IT trade shows in the US has been increasing year after year. In 2006, Brazil IT will be present as an exhibitor and will present success cases in four events: IT Channel Vision, Gartner Outsourcing Summit, Midsize Enterprise Summit West and Gartner Symposium/Itxpo.

During Gartner Symposium/ITxpo 2005, Brazil-IT members -- which include industry associations from major IT clusters in the country such as Campinas and Pernambuco -- closed US$ 30 million in deals. This year, the group is raising the bar in order raise sales as well as awareness about Brazil IT as a center of excellence for IT outsourcing.

For more information on the participating companies in IT Channel Vision, visit www.brazil-it.com. To schedule interviews, please call Ana Martini, from Brazil Information Center, at (202) 471-4020.

Posted by ana at 04:04 PM

Brazil IT companies at IT Channel Vision Summit

May 8th, 2006

ORLANDO, FL - Five companies are representing the Brazil IT at the IT Channel Vision Summit (Orlando, May 7th to 10th): BRQ, PX Solutions, Actminds, Stefanini and Politec. All have operations in the U.S. and have already been working with American companies for the past few years. This is the first time they participate in the Gartner event and can be found in the Brazil-IT booth. They also will present their products and services in various boardrooms.

Here is a brief description of each corporation and their activities:

BRQ - BRQ is focused on services such as Software / Web Development, Corporate Portals, Staff Augmentation, Legacy Transformation & Migration, Large Databases Management and Application Maintenance (Onshore & Offshore). Currently staffed with over 1,100 professionals distributed in 5 technology centers, the company is one of the fastest growing IT companies in Brazil. Also, in 2004, BRQ was awarded "Best Software Factory in Brazil" by IDG. Among its clients are the Coca-Cola Company, Texaco and IBM.

PX Solutions - Founded in 1992, PX Solutions offers a full-fledged family of Document/Knowledge Management software and has offices in New York and Rio de Janeiro. Its clients include Petrobras, Sony and Sodexho. Its main product is Wintility Pro Master, a system that allows users to create knowledge bases, manage documents, collaborate, save tacit information and perform workflow functions.

Actminds - Actminds is a consortium of Brazilian companies with US headquarters in Pennsylvania and focused on web applications development and R&D outsourcing. Its products and service portfolio include Application Programming Interface/Integrated Content Software, Business Intelligence, Clinical Data Repository, Consulting, IT, Consulting, Content Management, Single Sign-On and Software Development Systems Integration. Some of its clients are Johnson & Johnson, Lucent Technologies and General Motors.

Stefanini - Founded in 1987, Stefanini is a CMMi5 certified corporation, with over 4,000 employees in software development centers and offices in Brazil, Argentina, Chile, Peru, Colombia, Mexico, Spain, Italy and Portugal. In the U.S., it has operations in Fort Lauderdale, Atlanta and New York. Among its clients are Microsoft, Ford and Boeing.

Politec - With over 6,500 employees and 11 technology centers, Politec offers ADM (Application Development and Maintenance), Systems Integration, Legacy Transformation and Distributed Monitoring, among others. Politec is also a CMMi5 certified company and is sponsoring alone three boardrooms in the IT Channel Vision. Some of its clients are Microsoft, the U.S. Navy and the Office of the President of Brazil.

Brazil is positioning itself as on of the best options for American corporations interested in outsourcing software development and information technology services abroad. The country offers skilled labor force, cost advantages, business and cultural compatibility, modern telecommunications infra-structure, geographic and time zone proximity, pioneering solutions for several industries, reduced geopolitical risk and favorable business environment.

Backed by the Brazilian government, these and other IT companies are investing to increase their exports and sales to the US. Although the country's $15 billion IT industry is the world's seventh largest, it exports only a small fraction of its production, which analysts consider to be a strong sign of internal market maturity and demand. The Brazilian IT industry’s goal is to reach $2 billion in exports by 2007.

For more information on the participating companies in IT Channel Vision, visit www.brazil-it.com. To schedule interviews, please call Ana Martini, from Brazil Information Center, at (1 202) 471-4020.

Posted by ana at 03:56 PM

Brazil IT companies launch newsletter to promote country as technology power

May 8th, 2006

ORLANDO, FL - Brazilian information technology companies are launching the first edition of "Brazil-IT News" newsletter during Gartner's IT Channel Vision, which takes place in Orlando from May 7th to 10th. The newsletter's goal is to keep IT opinion makers and executives informed about developments in Brazil's fast growing IT industry and promote it as the next stop for US corporations interested in outsourcing software development and information technology services offshore.

"Our goal is to let the world know that we excel in IT development," said Renata Sanches, project manager at the Brazilian Export agency APEX, which works with the IT sector in Brazil to raise awareness of the opportunities in IT exports as an engine for sector growth. "We an emerging market leader in high-tech development and ready to provide the American corporations creative solutions for their IT needs."

While Brazil is well known as one of the leading exporters in many sectors, from commodities to airplanes, the launch of "Brazil-IT News" is part of the strategy to build the country's image as a high tech solutions provider, through the dissemination of content related to the accomplishments of Brazil's up and coming IT exporters and of items related to Brazil's internal IT economy.

Brazil has long been a pioneer in the creation of solutions for industries such as banking, commercial automation, medical equipment and transportation. Among these, Brazil has one of the world's most modern national banking networks that allows real-time transfer of funds and an electronic balloting system that shows the results of national elections, in a country of continental proportions, within 24 hours. Most recently, Brazil has been widely noted in the US press for leading the way with advanced technology for flex-fuel cars that run on ethanol or gasoline or both. Brazil may be a model for the development of a similar system in developed countries..

A new edition of Brazil IT news will be distributed during each Gartner event in the United States this year, including the IT Channel Vision, the Midsize Enterprise Summit - the only global event addressing the IT issues to midsize organizations that will take place in Phoenix, Arizona, in September 17th to the 20th - and the Gartner Symposium/ITxpo 2006 - the industry's largest and most strategic conference for senior IT and business professionals that will be held in Orlando, Florida, in October. In addition, "Brazil-IT News" is being distributed to the press, to analysts and nearly 1,000 decision-makers in IT companies in the United States.

"Brazil-IT News" will bring market reports, editorials and news about Brazilian products and services. The first edition's highlights are a report on Intel's US$ 50 billion venture capital fund in Brazil, Google's co-founder, Sergey Brin's comments on Brazil as having a favorable business environment, and Brazilian IT provider Politec ranked second in Business Week's Outsourcing Emerging Players list.

To subscribe "Brazil-IT News" for free, email amartini@brazil-it.com. For more information of Brazilian IT providers, visit www.brazil-it.com.

Posted by ana at 03:50 PM

May 08, 2006

Politec Provides Application Maintenance Services for CDI Corporation

May 08, 2006
Market Wire

RESTON, VA Politec recently signed an international offshore outsourcing contract with CDI Corporation. CDI is a leader in IT in the United States, with more than 1200 offices in 35 countries and 2005 revenues of $1.1 billion.
Following a global evaluation process and selection by CDI, involving several months of negotiation and technical evaluation, including a benchmark analysis by a third-party company, Politec was selected as CDI's offshore partner.

The umbrella contract signed anticipates a series of Application Development and Maintenance services over the next several years.

According to Politec Executive Vice President Humberto Ribeiro, CDI compared Politec with a number of competitors from a number of other countries, and found that Politec had the competence and consistency needed to form a solid partnership. "This contract demonstrates that we are headed in the right direction to expand our portfolio of IT service exports, and finding trustworthy partners who want innovation, competence, consistence and quality in their long-term contracts."

Now many of CDI's systems will be maintained by Politec. The first system was migrated to Politec's Application Maintenance Center (AMC) in São Paulo in November 2005. The aim of the project is to maintain a human resources management application, CDI-RPM (Resource Program Management). With the migration, several professionals who had been responsible for the day-to-day programming of the system in the US were augmented with a group in the AMC in Brazil. The professionals in Brazil maintain high levels of service and find ways to increase efficiency, allowing CDI to focus on the business strategies for the RPM platform.

The system maintenance agreement for CDI-RPM covers an initial period of 36 months. The agreement includes corrective, evolving, and adaptive maintenance for the existing application, with a robust governance tool that allows CDI to request changes to the baseline system on the fly. The governance tool is monitored daily for requests, which are quantified and sent back to CDI for business justification and approval. The Politec AMC in São Paulo has a dedicated team which is solely responsible for all of the requests, and CDI has the benefit of a fixed bid for corrective maintenance for the entire duration of the contract. Politec is so confident that the maintenance work will become more efficient over time, that a number of future cost reductions are built into the agreement with CDI.

Politec has extensive experience in systems development and maintenance. The company's innovative remote systems maintenance expertise is a key differentiator for the company in the global market for offshore IT services. The qualifications of Politec's professionals, as well as the maturity of their processes for migration, documentation, metrics for business management, and maintenance, have impressed CDI and the North American market.

CDI Corp. (NYSE: CDI) is a leading provider of engineering and information technology outsourcing solutions and professional staffing. Its operating units include CDI Business Solutions, CDI AndersElite Limited, Todays Staffing, Inc. and Management Recruiters International, Inc. Visit CDI at http://www.cdicorp.com.

From its origins as a 100% Brazilian company, Politec is rapidly widening its scope as a global player in IT services. The partnership with CDI is projected to grow, with increasing activity in Application Development and Maintenance. The partnership is another important step in the Global Reach strategy that Politec has implemented in order to become a leader in the international market for offshore IT services. Visit Politec at http://www.politec.com.

Posted by ana at 02:39 PM

April 10, 2006

A Web Site Born in U.S. Finds Fans in Brazil

April 10, 2006
New York Times
By SETH KUGEL

RIO DE JANEIRO - Ask Internet users here what they think of Orkut, the two-year-old Google social networking service, and you may get a blank stare. But pronounce it "or-KOO-chee," as they do in Portuguese, and watch faces light up.

"We were just talking about it!" said Suellen Monteiro, approached by a reporter as she gossiped with four girlfriends at a bar in the New York City Center mall here. The topic was the guy whom 18-year-old Aline Makray had met over the weekend at a Brazilian funk dance, who had since found her on Orkut and asked her to join his network.

Orkut, the invention of a Turkish-born software engineer named Orkut Buyukkokten, never really caught on in the United States, where MySpace rules teenage cyberspace. But it is nothing short of a cultural phenomenon in Brazil.

About 11 million of Orkut's more than 15 million users are registered as living in Brazil - a remarkable figure given that studies have estimated that only about 12 million Brazilians use the Internet from home. (And that 11 million does not include people like Ms. Makray, who clicked on Hungary as a nod to her heritage, or someone named Mauricio who wrote in Portuguese but jokingly registered as being from Mauritius.)

Expect Brazilian Portuguese dictionaries to add "orkut" to upcoming editions. O Globo, Rio's biggest daily newspaper, refers to it without further explanation. And the Brazilian media routinely measures the popularity of music groups and actors by the number of user communities dedicated to them on Orkut.

"Surto," a popular comedic play showing in Rio de Janeiro, is peppered with references to Orkut. And the site's jargon has entered the Brazilian lexicon, like "scrap" (pronounced "SKRAH-pee" or "SHKRAH-pee"), meaning a note that one user leaves in another's virtual scrapbook for everyone - including jealous boyfriends and girlfriends and curious suitors - to see.

But the sheer popularity of Orkut, which people can join by invitation only, has had several unexpected consequences. Almost as soon as Brazilians started taking over Orkut in 2004 - and long before April 2005, when Google made Orkut available in Portuguese - English-speaking users formed virulently anti-Brazilian communities like "Too Many Brazilians on Orkut."

And, more darkly, Orkut's success has made it a popular vehicle for child pornographers, pedophiles and racist and anti-Semitic groups, according to Brazilian prosecutors and nonprofit groups. Hatemongering on Orkut has also been decried in the United States and elsewhere, but it is in Brazil where the biggest effort is under way to halt the problem and confront Google's seemingly tight-lipped attitude.

SaferNet Brasil, a nongovernmental organization founded late last year, tracks human rights violations on Orkut and has generated much press coverage of illegal activity on the site. (Many forms of racist speech are outlawed in Brazil.)

SaferNet's president, Thiago Nunes de Oliveira, a professor of cyberlaw at the Catholic University of Salvador, said the problem had exploded in the last few months. "In 45 days of work, we identified 5,000 people who were using the Internet, and principally Orkut, to distribute images of explicit sex with children," he said. And that was aside from the racists, neo-Nazis and other hate groups the organization found.

In February, after several failed attempts to contact Google's Brazil office, Mr. Nunes de Oliveira said, SaferNet Brasil filed a complaint with federal prosecutors in Sao Paulo. Prosecutors summoned Google's Brazilian sales staff to a meeting on March 10 and asked them for help identifying users breaking Brazilian human rights laws.

Google declined a reporter's requests for a direct interview with Mr. Buyukkokten, but a spokeswoman forwarded some of Mr. Buyukkokten's responses by e-mail. The Brazilian office, he said, handles ad sales and does not even work with Orkut, which produces no revenue. "Orkut prohibits illegal activity (such as child pornography) as well as hate speech and advocating violence," he wrote. "We will remove such content from Orkut when we are notified."

But Mr. Nunes de Oliveira said that removing the content was not what they were asking for. "The incapacity of the authorities to investigate these crimes is principally the lack of cooperation by Google in identifying those users," he said. He also worried that Google was not archiving evidence of crimes as it deleted offending pages.

Thamea Danelon Valiengo, part of a team of federal prosecutors working on cybercrime cases in Sao Paulo, agreed. She said that prosecutors had asked judges to order Google to turn over information on users who perpetrate crimes. So far, she said, Google has agreed to send a lawyer to Brazil for a meeting in May.

Mr. Buyukkokten wrote by e-mail that Google would cooperate with the authorities, but did not specify whether, for example, it would provide logs allowing users to be traced by their Internet address, as prosecutors have asked. A Google spokeswoman, Debbie Frost, said by e-mail that in four to six weeks, Orkut would deploy a tool that would "better identify and remove content that violates our terms of use."

In general, though, Orkut fanatics seem undisturbed by illegal activity on the site, which most of those interviewed said they had never come across personally. They were more interested in finding long-lost classmates and friends, one of the site's most lauded abilities. Schools, workplaces, even residential streets have "communities" joined by people who have studied, worked or lived there.

And everyone has stories of romance foiled by a telltale posting. Ms. Makray once found the page of a man who had flirted with her in a club. "He hadn't told me that he had children or that he was married," she said. "I discovered it on Orkut."

Erika Laun, 23, checks Orkut every day from work to keep an eye on her boyfriend. "When we were first going out," she said, "a girl who liked him was always sending messages and making fun of the messages that I sent him." The rival's sister, whom he didn't even know, helped out, sending messages like "Hey big boy, love you, 1,000 kisses."

"I was really angry," Ms. Laun said.

No one quite knows why Orkut caught on among Brazilians and not Americans, although the fact that it is an invitation-only network might explain why it exploded in Brazil. In a 2005 interview with the newspaper Folha de Sao Paulo, Mr. Buyukkokten said it might be because Brazilians were "a friendly people," and perhaps because some of his own friends, among the first to join the network, had Brazilian friends.

Fernanda Leon, an architecture student eating at a Middle Eastern restaurant here with her boyfriend, said she thought Brazil had gravitated toward Orkut because of the country's inherently social culture. "Brazilians really want to interact with other people, both old friends and new people," she said. She has 379 friends on her network.

Mr. Nunes de Oliveira of SaferNet stressed that he was only against the illegal uses of Orkut. "It's a fantastic tool, an excellent service," he said. "We do not want it gone."

Posted by ana at 01:53 PM

April 05, 2006

Brazil IT's boardroom presentation: "Best Practices in Outsourcing" by DBA

April, 3 2006

Orlando, FL - In 2004, when German telecommunications equipment maker Siemens Mobile (acquired by BenQ in 2005) decided to establish an embedded software development center as part of its worldwide strategy for a new family of consumer electronic devices, it chose to establish a development center in Brazil.

While testing facilities were placed in India and hardware production in China, Brazil brought forth the cost, expertise and competence combination required for the development portion of this true global sourcing scheme. DBA Engineering, one of Brazil's leading ITO providers, was chosen as the partner of choice for this effort.

The decision to outsource was based on the need to free up internal IT staff to allow them to focus on more strategic projects and to take advantage of the cost savings of going offshore.

DBA's Executive Vice President Paulo Mordehachvili presented the Siemens Mobile case study at the Gartner Oursourcing Summit in Orlando, to an audience comprised of C-level IT leaders.

DBA's presentation is part of Brazil IT's participation at the event. Brazil IT is a group of Brazilian Information Technology services and software development companies focused on increasing Brazil's participation in the IT Outsourcing market.

The Case

The goal for Siemens new software facility was the development applications for mobile phones using Java components. Siemens needed a low-cost pool of Java developers, high quality workmanship and additional incentives such as tax breaks.

In 18 weeks, DBA established one team to work on hardware restrictions and detailed requirements in Germany and another team in the Development Center in Brazil, home to the world's second largest Java developer community. The use of Siemens Mobile's management methodology and the integration of results with the facilities in India and China, as well as J2ME and C/C++ development based on the Linux platform were the key levers of DBA’s ability to meet the challenges presented by the client.

"DBA's experience with Siemens is only one example of many successful cases of companies that have chosen Brazil as a key sourcing destination, and DBA as a sourcing partner of choice," said Mr. Mordehachvilli. "We have proven ourselves as a provider of high value added development services - based on our depth of business knowledge alongside technology expertise."

For more information on DBA or any of the Brazilian companies participating at the Gartner Outsourcing Summit 2006, visit www.brazil-it.com. Brazil IT is sponsored by Apex Brazil, the Brazilian Trade Promotion Agency. To schedule interviews with Mr. Mordehachvilli or other Brazilian IT executives, please contact Ana Martini at the Brazil Information Center, (202) 471-4020 or (310) 560-7877.

Posted by ana at 05:12 PM

Brazil IT's boardroom presentation: "Successful Outsourcing to Brazil" by Stefanini

April, 3 2006

Orlando, FL - Brazilian IT provider Stefanini IT Solutions, one of only 35 companies in the world with Level 5 CMMI certification, will present a success case at the Gartner IT Outsourcing Summit from April 3 to 5 in Orlando, Florida, as part of a showcase of several Brazil IT companies demonstrating points of excellence during the event. Brazil IT's participation at the Gartner Outsourcing Summit is part of an ongoing strategy of strengthening the image of Brazil as an up and coming player in the competitive market of nearshore outsourcing destinations for US companies.

Stefanini's success case client is Idera, headquartered in Houston, Texas, and a leading provider of systems management tools for the world's fastest growing database - Microsoft's SQL Server. With over 120 employees, the company has a worldwide distribution and offers round the clock support for a family of seven products encompassing performance management, diagnostics, compliance, backup and recovery. Among its clients are Microsoft, Citibank and Boeing.

Idera came to Stefanini while looking for an outsourcing partner that could guarantee it could keep up with Idera's fast pace of growth, facilitate an aggressive product delivery schedule while ensuring quality and reducing Idera's office space demands as well as development and hardware costs. After assessing possible providers in India, China and Eastern Europe, in 2004 Idera chose Stefanini IT Solutions to support the ongoing enhancement of seven products and the release of four new products by the end of 2006.

With more than 4,000 employees in Brazil, Stefanini successfully delivered three major product components in three and a half months and also transferred two products for continuous maintenance. "Our experience with Idera has been one example of the flexibility of the service solutions we can deliver to all our clients," said Stefanini Director Antonio Moreira. "As a result of the initial phase of the project, Idera is increasing the amount of work outsourced to Stefanini - transforming an initial short term contract into a long term relationship."

Among the reasons why Idera selected Stefanini were its overall resource creativity, IP protection, project commitment and innovation. Furthermore, US companies have several benefits from working with Brazil, especially when compared to other outsourcing destinations such as India and China. Brazil and the United States are in the same time zone with similar work hours, which facilitates quick interaction and communication.

Founded in 1987, Stefanini is one of the leading IT providers in Brazil, with offices throughout the country and 12 software development centers. Stefanini also has operations in several US cities (Fort Lauderdale, Atlanta and New York), as well as in Argentina, Chile, Peru, Colombia, Mexico, Spain, Italy and Portugal.

For more information on the companies participating at the Gartner Outsourcing Summit 2006, visit www.brazil-it.com. Brazil IT is sponsored by Apex Brazil, the Brazilian Trade Promotion Agency. To schedule interviews with Stefanini or any other Brazilian IT executives, please contact Ana Martini at the Brazil Information Center (202) 471-4020 or (310) 560-7877.

Posted by ana at 05:10 PM

Brazil IT's boardroom presentation: "Software Development and Application Management" by Actminds

April, 3 2006

Orlando, FL - In 2004, a leading US-headquartered Fortune 50 corporation in the pharmaceutical and medical market looking for ways to free up internal Information Technology staff discovered the right fit with Brazilian IT provider Actminds, accomplishing its goal of implementing all future development and management of 80 customer-facing web sites in a secure environment, increasing productivity and reducing costs.

The US company maintains a marketing web portal linking its different business units, distributors and marketing agencies. The portal is used to deploy marketing campaigns to clients and is a direct connection with back office systems for sales, logistics and accounting.

The critical need for this corporation was to find an offshore provider capable of working directly with each of the different business units' marketing group to define specific marketing campaign requirements and also work directly with a select group of external design agencies.

Actminds, a consortium of Brazilian software development companies with US headquarters in Pennsylvania, was chosen after an extensive search for an outsourcing partner, which spanned several countries. Actminds developed various pieces of the web portal in Brazil, performed all necessary testing and remotely deployed applications via Virtual Private Network (VPN) to the client's testing environment, where the internal staff tried the portals prior to transferring them to the production platform.

After one year and a half of partnership, Actminds significantly reduced the client's costs, freed internal IT staff to focus on more strategic projects and provided staff flexibility to respond to last-minute marketing campaigns. Finally, Actminds successfully passed a corporate data security audit, in which the client visited their facilities in Brazil and reviewed in detail the development environment and data security procedures and safeguards.

Actminds will discuss its experience with this US client at the Gartner Outsourcing Summit in Orlando, which runs from April 3-5. Actminds will be represented at the event by CI&T CEO Cesar Gon and program manager Robert Hartman. Their case will be presented to a group of US CIOs, as part of Brazil IT's participation at the event. Brazil IT is a group of Brazilian Information Technology services and software development companies focused on increasing Brazil’s participation in the IT Outsourcing market.
With US headquarters at the Science Center in Philadelphia, PA, Actminds is a global Healthcare IT services organization led by a unique team of highly qualified healthcare and technology professionals focused on application development, integration and management services. Product/Service categories Include: Application Programming Interface/Integrated Content Software, Business Intelligence, Clinical Data Repository, Consulting, IT, Consulting, Management, Content Management, Outsourcing, Project Management, Single Sign-On, Software Development Systems Integration, Web Portals, Website Construction, Design & Planning.

For more information on the companies participating at the Gartner Outsourcing Summit 2006, visit www.brazil-it.com. Brazil IT is sponsored by Apex Brazil, the Brazilian Trade Promotion Agency. To schedule interviews with Actminds Brazilian IT executives, please contact Ana Martini at the Brazil Information Center (202) 471-4020 or (310) 560-7877.

Posted by ana at 05:06 PM

Brazil IT presents success case studies at the Gartner Outsourcing Summit 2006

April, 3 2006

Orlando - Brazil IT, a group of Brazilian Information Technology services and software development companies, is participating at the Gartner Outsourcing Summit 2006 in Orlando, April 3rd to 5th, where they will present three case studies to showcase Brazil's excellence in the extremely competitive global IT outsourcing industry.

Along with other leading international providers, executives from Brazil's Stefanini IT Solutions, ActMinds and DBA will present their success cases in the development of products and services for global heavyweights such as Siemens Mobile and Idera. The three companies will make their presentations before a select group of CIOs, analysts and decision makers from companies that are focused on expanding offshore sourcing partnerships and seeking an exchange of knowledge and best practices with their peers.

Backed by a strong push by the government to increase the industry's exports, Brazilian IT companies are focusing on the US market. Brazil's $15 billion IT industry is the world's seventh largest, making it only slightly smaller than India's. Today, Brazil exports only a small fraction of its IT industry's production, which analysts consider to be a strong sign of internal market maturity and demand. However, the government and private sector are investing heavily in global promotion of Brazilian capabilities with the goal of increasing exports to $2 billion by 2007.

Many analysts believe that Brazil can be one of the next main contenders in the global rush for competitive IT outsourcing for US companies looking to reduce costs while accessing a highly qualified labor force, due to its geographic and time zone proximity to the US, business and cultural compatibility, non-existent geopolitical risk, modern telecommunications infrastructure, favorable business environment and pioneering solutions to a broad array of economic sectors such as banking, healthcare, e-gov and commercial automation.

BRAZIL IT: Booth N
Monday, April 3, 2006
Solution Showcase Dessert Reception: 12:00 pm - 2:00 pm
Solution Showcase Reception: 5:30 pm - 7:30 pm
Tuesday, April 4, 2006
Solution Showcase Dessert Reception: 12:00 pm - 2:00 pm

For more information on the companies participating at the Gartner Outsourcing Summit 2006, visit www.brazil-it.com. To schedule interviews with Brazilian IT executives, please contact Ana Martinit at Brazil Information Center (202) 471-4020.

Posted by ana at 03:13 PM

March 29, 2006

Intel sets up venture fund for Brazil

March 28, 2006
By Michael Kanellos
Nytimes.com

Intel Capital, the venture arm of chipmaker Intel, has created a venture fund that will invest $50 million in Brazilian start-ups, the latest step in an effort to expand its business in emerging nations.

The fund will invest in a variety of companies but pay particular attention to start-ups focusing on wireless technologies such as WiMax, said a spokesman. Intel has already invested about $35 million in 13 Brazilian start-ups, including Digitron, TelecomNet and Certsign. The new fund will thus bring the total invested in Brazil to around $85 million. CEO Paul Otellini is in Brazil for a series of meetings this week.

Brazil is part of the so-called BRIC powers, which also include Russia, India and China. These four countries are expected to constitute four of the fastest-growing regional markets and tech centers over the next few decades. But, as one IBM executive said, there is a big difference between the BR and IC parts of the equation, with crime, political instability and other issues hampering the development of indigenous tech industries in Brazil and Russia.

Sprinkling venture dollars to jumpstart a new market is a longstanding strategy at Intel. Last year, Craig Barrett popped over to Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, to announce a $50 million fund concentrating on the Middle East. It also has created funds for Russia, India and China.

In the past few years, the chipmaker has emerged as one of the largest venture investors in the world. While Intel wants to obtain a financial return on its investment, its venture funds largely exist to help create new products and ultimately spur demand for new PCs or other products containing Intel chips. The company has a large general fund as well as several specialty funds.

The success of the specialty funds varies all over the map. For instance, Intel created a fund targeted at companies developing technology for its Itanium processor. After several years, however, Itanium is selling below expectations. In 2005, a now-retired Intel Capital executive said that the company would not likely be placing investments in start-ups in Russia had it foreseen the most recent political scandals.

On the other hand, some of Intel's Chinese investments have already held IPOs. Overall, since 1991, 160 of the companies in Intel Capital's portfolio have been acquired while another 150 have gone public.

Posted by ana at 01:39 PM

March 13, 2006

ACTMINDS OFFERS A UNIQUE VALUE PROPOSITION

March 13, 2006

Looking to expand their client base, which includes some of the world's leading telecom equipment manufacturers, Actminds - a provider of hardware and software R&D Outsourcing services, will participate for the first time at the upcoming Spring 2006 VON Conference & Expo, March 14-17 at the San Jose Convention Center in San Jose, CA.

With US headquarters at the Science Center in Philadelphia, Actminds has 15 years of expertise in telecommunications working with clients and partners all the way from product conception to final delivery and support in four specific areas:

VOIP - developing applications and the interface between legacy and IP networks for public and private systems
IPTV - enabling current IP network to handle IPTV
WIMAX - develop systems for WiMax at the base as well as subscriber station
PSTN - switching and access

Actminds has a unique value proposition that combines hardware and software integration for products sold in a worldwide basis and offers unique capabilities of R&D services.

"Actminds is one of the few Brazilian companies that can offer this combined approach of hardware and software on the VoIP, IPTV, and WiMax in Telecom and Internet," said company director Fabio Frias, who will be in San Jose. "This competitive advantage is an important asset for companies looking to improve their productivity and free up resources for other purposes." According to Frias, this competitive advantage is also responsible for leading ActMinds' fast growth in this sector, finding space as a provider of world class R&D services to U.S. companies, leveraging their investment in R&D.

Actminds has several notable clients with established projects including Lucent Technologies, Jabil Circuit and Aztek.

The model combination that most of Actminds' clients are following is to have a core team in house to hold the know-how and to outsource the heavy job of implementing and testing. The end-to-end R&D outsourcing comes later after the client gains more confidence on the provider.

To secure more business Actminds maintains a high level of investment in Customer IP Protection, Quality of Services, CMMi, ISO and other International Certification standards, Professional Certification, Labs Infrastructure and Communication Skills. "These are key elements of a long term strategy that has brought ActMinds a level of competence on par with the major in-house development teams of its clients," said Frias.

According to Frias, while the majority of larger companies like Motorola, Nortel, and Intel, have their own captive outsourcing centers in lower cost countries. Smaller companies cannot follow the same model due to economy of scale. "Actminds has a cost advantage structure that would allow these smaller companies to also have an outsourcing strategy that would improve their competitivity vis a vis the larger industry players," says Frias.

Brazil based companies offer a wide range of advantages to their US clients. Brazil is geographically and culturally close to the US. Brazil is only one time zone away from New York. New York - Sao Paulo is a nine hour flight, which allows next day meetings between client and provider whenever necessary.

About ActMinds
ActMinds provides Hardware and Software R&D Outsourcing services for Vendors of Telecom Equipment, Internetworking Equipment and Semiconductors with extensive experience in VoIP, IPTV, WiMax and PSTN.

To schedule interviews with a representative of ActMinds please contact Ana Martini at 202-471-4020.

Posted by ana at 02:23 PM

March 10, 2006

Taking a Brick out of BRIC

February 7, 2006
Fortune
by Ian Bremmer

Russia doesn't belong in the same league as Brazil, India, and China.

Ever since a team of Goldman Sachs economists coined the term "BRIC" in 2003--for Brazil, Russia, India, and China--this group of emerging-market countries has assumed greater importance in the international investment community's imagination.

The firm's economists argued that, given sound political decision-making and good luck, the BRIC economies together could become larger than those of the world's six most developed countries in less than 40 years. In other words, the research predicted nothing less than a profound shift in the global balance of power.

One reason the BRIC idea resonated is that the term itself evokes building blocks, foundations, solidity. But a closer look at the political and economic peculiarities of the states in question suggests that BIC, not BRIC, is the better formula. Call them the "breakout industrializing countries." Russia is quite out of place with that crowd.

It's not that Russia won't enjoy strong GDP growth over the coming decades or that the country doesn't offer a number of attractive opportunities for global investors. But Russia's growth is based on (and limited by) quite different factors than exist in Brazil, India, and China.

When Vladimir Putin became President in 2000, Russia seemed a potential economic powerhouse. The country had enormous advantages over other developing states: a well-educated workforce, most of the former Soviet Union's assets, and enormous wealth in natural resources. Russia had survived the 1998 financial crisis and the first consensual transfer of power in centuries. Putin was saying all the right things about democracy, transparency, rule of law, and market access.

But it has become clear during his five years in office that Putin and his team have a quite different agenda. The Kremlin is less interested in opening Russia's economy to market forces than in leveraging the country's enormous resource wealth to consolidate state control of Russia's domestic politics and to restore Moscow's international influence. This strategy limits Russia's long-term economic growth potential in several ways.

First, the key assumption underlying the Goldman Sachs projection was that the BRICs would hit their long-term growth targets only if their political leaders committed themselves to "maintain policies and develop institutions that are supportive of growth." In the short term Russia has enjoyed a substantial economic upturn. Since the financial crisis seven years ago, GDP growth has averaged 6.4% annually. But Russia's current surge is based on high oil prices, not on growth-promoting institutions, leaving its economic health at the mercy of cyclical global energy markets.

Russia is the world's No. 1 exporter of gas and the No. 2 exporter of oil. Energy-related revenues account for more than 20% of GDP, which means that high oil prices have allowed the Kremlin to ignore the need to diversify the economy by enabling entrepreneurship and investment in non-energy-related research and development. Brazil, India, and China have neither Russia's oil and gas resources nor the temptations they offer to resist foreign investment and economic diversification.

Second, the Goldman Sachs forecast explicitly depends on growth in employment and on technical progress. Russia's unemployment rate remains in double digits, in part because corruption and bureaucracy ensure that small- and medium-sized businesses account for only 13% of Russia's GDP. And although the energy sector accounts for one-fifth of the economy, it provides only 1% of Russia's jobs. The reliance on oil and gas to satisfy the political demands of the moment makes it easier to ignore the need to invent new ways to diversify the economy.

Third, as the Goldman report notes, "openness to trade and foreign direct investment has generally been an important part of successful development." But when it comes to Russia's most profitable economic sectors, the Kremlin spends less energy and political capital on bridges to foreign investment than it does on building ring fences. In 2003, the year Goldman Sachs issued its report, FDI reached nearly $4.3 billion in India, $10.1 billion in Brazil, and $53.5 billion in China. Russia took in just over $1.1 billion. The difference can largely be explained by the fact that Russia has repeatedly shown potential international investors and consumers that politics will trump profits. Ask imprisoned former Yukos chairman Mikhail Khodorkovsky. Witness the fallout in Europe over Moscow's recent attempt to squeeze Ukraine by cutting gas supplies. It's always dangerous to use short-term trends to question the accuracy of long-term projections, but Russia's dependence on energy revenues and the Kremlin's drive to consolidate control of key economic sectors are highly unlikely to prove short-term trends.

China, India, and Brazil have, to varying degrees, emerged as potential economic powers. India has been slow to shed its protectionist economic model. Brazilian politics have been plagued by corruption. And it's possible that social unrest and pressures for political reform in China will create instability there, long before Goldman's growth projections become reality. But in all three countries, globalization is driving economic development and expansion.

Russia also has strong growth potential. But until the government enables economic diversification and treats foreign investment as an opportunity rather than a risk, it should be considered in a different category from Brazil, India, and China.

If Goldman's economists had wanted to include a state that has a powerful energy-driven economy, serious reservations about globalization, and centralized control of investment flows, resources, and political authority, they might well have chosen Saudi Arabia. On its face the suggestion seems absurd, yet Russia's long-term growth potential is limited by many of the same factors plaguing the Saudi kingdom.

The Goldman Sachs forecast has fueled intense interest in the inevitable shift in the balance of global political and economic power over the next half century. It has provided intriguing glimpses of a world no longer dominated by U.S., European, and Japanese interests. The BIC economies have enormous potential to alter the international landscape over the next generation. Yet the Kremlin's political choices are likely to stunt Russia's long-term economic development for many years to come.

Ian Bremmer is president of Eurasia Group, a political-risk consultancy.

Posted by ana at 10:43 AM

February 17, 2006

Actminds Takes Part At The HIMSS06 Annual Conference And Exhibition, Largest Healthcare It Event In The World

February, 17 2006

ActMinds, a global Healthcare IT services Organization led by a team of highly qualified healthcare and technology providers, emerged from its participation at HIMSS06, Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society Annual Conference and Exhibition last week, energized by the growth of opportunities seen in the US healthcare sector for Regional Health Information Organizations (RIHO) integration.

"We are specially qualified to work as an integrator for the RIHO's," said ActMinds Director Leonardo Mattiazzi, who participated at the event. "This trend towards greater connectivity among doctors, hospitals, labs, pharmacies, and other healthcare institutions opens up a whole new market for a company with the expertise and experience we have at ActMinds."

Bringing together about 25000 players in the healthcare market, including CIOs, CMOs (Chief Medical Officers) and CMIOs (Chief Medical Information Officers), HIMSS is an annual event of industry leaders seeking to transform healthcare through innovative technologies. Participating for the first time as an exhibitor at HIMSS06, Actminds, based in Philadelphia, PA, and led by healthcare and technology professionals focused on application development, integration and management services, is actively setting up new alliances with a range of global partners involved in the development of e-Health portals through which hospitals, physicians and insurers can use the Web to communicate effectively with their patients, and patient information can be shared by different providers.

"The participation of ActMinds in events of this size and relevance is a natural step in our strategy to create and strengthen mutually beneficial partnerships in the US market," says Mattiazzi. "Specifically, being at HIMSS as exhibitors was extremely fruitful in our goal of establishing new contacts with potential clients and strategic partners. We know from our current client portfolio in the healthcare industry that the quality of our products and services is top of the line, and that our cost structure is extremely competitive."

Mattiazzi participated at the event accompanied by ActMinds' special advisor Marcio Biczyk, who recently joined ActMinds, coming from a position as CIO of a 2000 bed hospital. "What we saw at HIMSS is an industry which is evolving at breakneck speed towards information management integration and a brand new world where the quality of care will be vastly improved, medical errors averted, billions of dollars saved through the elimination of redundant diagnostic procedures, preventable complications, paper chart delays, and other inefficiencies," said Biczyk. "ActMinds is well positioned as a provider of services for this industry, which leaves us very optimistic about our growth prospects in the next year."
About ActMinds:

With US headquarters at the Science Center in Philadelphia, PA, ActMinds is a global Healthcare IT services organization led by a unique team of highly qualified healthcare and technology professionals focused on application development, integration and management services. Product/Service categories Include: Application Programming Interface/Integrated Content Software, Business Intelligence, Clinical Data Repository, Consulting, IT, Consulting, Management, Content Management, Outsourcing, Project Management, Single Sign-On, Software Development Systems Integration, Web Portals, Website Construction, Design & Planning.

To schedule interviews with a representative of ActMinds please contact Ana Martini at 202-471-4020.

Posted by ana at 11:16 AM

February 13, 2006

Politec on BusinessWeek Outsourcing Emerging Players List

February, 13 2006

BusinessWeek magazine, one of America's foremost periodicals, addressed as a main subject, on January 30th, an extensive global study on the THE FUTURE OF OUTSOURCING. On this edition, the magazine presents the current global scenario led by American and Indian companies. However, for the first time, Brazil appears on the Emerging Outsourcing Players list. POLITEC, the leading Brazilian IT Services provider, ranks in second place on the list among 15 other corporations including companies from China, Russia, and Mexico.

Link for the BusinessWeek full article:
http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/toc/06_05/B3969magazine.htm

Link for the "Emerging Outsourcing Players" table:
http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/06_05/b3969421.htm

Link for the picture "Outsourcing Goes Global":
http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/06_05/b3969411.htm

For Humberto Ribeiro, POLITEC's Head of International Operations, this is a result of the Global Reach Strategy that has been in place for 2 years at Politec, aiming at quality gains, productivity, and visibility simultaneously with globally competitive pricing. Beyond traditional certifications, like CMMi-5, POLITEC is also evolving in global diversity and a client-driven mindset, with three strategic lines:

Commercial Scope: Being present on the American market since 1999, with distinguished Clients in healthcare and government organizations such as the FBI, the U.S. Department of State, U.S. Navy, among many others, Politec adjusted its approach to the U.S. market by amplifying its portfolio services to go beyond Security Solutions and incorporating its Outsourcing offers with a concept of "Nearshore" - leveraging the benefits of Brazil in the context of IT Services and BPO - under the management of Dalton Luz, Politec U.S. Operations CEO, who recently strengthened that subsidiary sales team. Politec also installed new operations in Japan, managed by Stanley Fukuyama, and established partnerships with leading companies in China and Europe. With this approach, the company started to be directly and consistently present at the main Information Technology markets in the globe.

Portfolio Strengthening: A permanent reflection has been dedicated to the variety of products and services Politec offers to the market. Considering a vast experience of 35 years, Politec has always promoted its constant innovation mindset and carefully grown into new verticals offering valuable solutions and services that push its Clients ahead of their competition. Some of our recent portfolio additions include solutions developed for Auditing and Corporative Governance (Web Governance) and the creation of a new company within Politec's Group called PoliCS ( www.polics.com ), which is solely focused on SAP Services.

Talent Investment: Politec is expanding opportunities to its 6.000 collaborators to join activities that are being developed world-wide. This is based on digital infrastructures such as: (a) The innovative Global Delivery Model developed by Politec, which allows a fast and transparent relationship between our Clients and Collaborators around the globe; and (b) the Consolidation of the existing business knowledge that is spread throughout the organization within our Knowledge Base Corporate Portal. These activities, along the ongoing technical, business and foreign language education, empower Politec's talent base and optimizes the involvement of each professional in projects that match their expertise generating profit growth for the Client and our collaborators.

Up to this moment, the expectations are continuously expanding. According to Mr. Ribeiro, "We are temporarily on the emerging players list. Our Global Reach initiative maturity and the success we have been achieving with our Clients, Collaborators and Strategic Alliances, will soon allow us a place on the list of Top Global Players".

For more information, please visit us at www.politec.com

Posted by ana at 08:27 AM

February 02, 2006

Google's Brin Says Internet Market in Brazil to Grow

January, 31 2006
Bloomberg
By Elzio Barreto

Google Inc., the most-used Internet search engine, expects ``high growth'' in Brazil as more people in Latin America's largest economy gain access to computers, the company's co-founder Sergey Brin said.

Google, which in July 2005 bought Brazilian research company Akwan Information Technologies Inc. for an undisclosed sum, expects a ``jump'' in high-speed Internet users, Brin said.

``There's already a lot of Internet activity and it's such a large country that it's going to grow very rapidly,'' Brin said at a news conference yesterday in Sao Paulo. ``There's no particular hurdle to get more people. It's not like the wires aren't there, it's not like there are any laws, regulations to make it hard to access. Once you have more broadband, you're going to have much more activity.''

The number of residential Internet users in Brazil rose 12 percent in 2005 from the previous year to 12.4 million people, according to a Jan. 18 report by researcher Ibope//NetRatings. Brazilians spent 18 hours a month on the Internet in December, more than any other country among 11 nations ranked in the report that included the U.S., Japan, Australia and France.

Google's Brin said doing business in Brazil is easier than in India or China because of the Latin American country's regulations and telecommunications infrastructure.

``Those two are also very interesting to us, but I think Brazil lacks a lot of the difficulties some of those other markets have,'' Brin said. ``Brazil has fairly free economy, it's very frictionless doing business here. For us, we see it as a really easy to do business and one where business is going to grow a lot.''

Shares of Mountain View, California-based Google fell $6.67 to $426.82 at 4 p.m. New York time in Nasdaq Stock Market composite trading. They have risen 2.9 percent this year.

Posted by ana at 09:56 AM

January 30, 2006

Major Players in Outsourcing

January, 30 2005
BusinessWeek

An expanded look at Gartner Inc.'s analysis of the who, what, where, and how much of offshore outsourcers
More and more multinational companies are turning to offshore outsourcing to help them cut costs and free talent to come up with new products and services. In recent years, Procter & Gamble, DuPont, Cisco, Unilever, ABN Amro, and Marriott have all signed megadeals with global outsourcing companies to overhaul internal operations such as accounting or human resources or to upgrade their technology.

This table represents research and consulting company Gartner Inc.'s analysis of the hot players in the global outsourcing business. Gartner's 10,000 global clients most frequently inquire about these companies as potential offshore partners. Gartner's hot list includes companies that offer software development, computer network support, R&D and engineering services, call centers, and business services from accounting to procurement. They have offshore staff stretching from Argentina to India to Tunisia. The companies represented here include boutique outfits that do under $100 million in offshore business a year and giants that take in billions through global outsourcing. The ranking is based on the frequency of queries from Gartner's 10,000 clients.

Posted by ana at 03:30 PM

Can Latin America Challenge India?

January 30, 2006
BusinessWeek

With proximity to the U.S. and free trade agreements in place, many countries south of the border are building up their outsourcing infrastructure

Softtek, a Mexican software development company, has been in business for 23 years, but it wasn't until 1997 that its founders realized they had something unique to offer U.S.-based clients: proximity. Until then, Softtek had been plenty busy helping Mexico's second-largest bank and other companies develop customized software and managing their info-tech systems. Advertisement

But inauguration of the North American Free Trade Agreement in 1994 made companies on both sides of the U.S.-Mexico border more aware of the benefits of doing business with each other. Clients liked the fact that they could fly down to Mexico in three to four hours and that the country is in the same time zone as the central U.S.

In a spurt of inspiration, Softtek trademarked the term NearShore. And over the past eight years, it has fine-tuned the concept, says 46-year-old CEO Blanca Treviño. "The U.S. was right next door, but we had to offer a differentiated product in order to get their business," she says. "We were the biggest in Mexico, but we were very small in comparison to India. If we hadn't come up with something to set us apart, we wouldn't have gone anywhere."

CLOSER TO HOME. Three years ago, Softtek bought General Electric's (GE ) Mexico-based IT operations, absorbing nearly 1,000 engineers. As a result, Softtek became the multinational's main nearshore solution for IT work in Latin America, performing support and maintenance for GE's commercial finance and energy groups. Since then, Softtek's revenues have been growing 40% annually and hit $146 million in 2005, with more than half of the business from U.S. clients.

Now, Softtek has 3,500 employees, mostly engineers, making it the largest IT outsourcer in Latin America. Softtek, based in Monterrey, Mexico, has offices in the U.S., Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, Peru, Puerto Rico, Venezuela, and Spain.

Why go to Mexico, where labor costs are higher than in India? Because the efficiency gains from working close to the U.S. and in the same time zone mean nearshoring in Mexico costs about the same as offshoring in India, says Treviño. Up to 95% of work can be performed off-site, in Mexico, compared to just 60% to 65% for clients working with Indian providers, she adds.

NONNUCLEAR NEIGHBOR. GE still outsources 90% of its IT work to India, sending just 6% to Mexico, says Steve Morrison, GE's London-based head of Global IT outsourcing. But, he notes, as India's costs rise, Mexico will look better and better. "If things continue as they are, India eventually will be charging the same unit cost as Mexico," he says. That's why Indian companies have been hustling to find ways to perform a higher percentage of the work off-site in India, he says.

Morrison points to another advantage Mexico has over India: Due to U.S. legislative restrictions, certain kinds of projects involving sensitive aviation and energy technology are more likely to go to Mexico than to India, a nuclear-power nation.

Argentina, which boasts one of the best-educated workforces in Latin America, also is aggressively promoting software development centers. That effort was helped by a major 2002 currency devaluation that made Argentina super-cost-competitive and drove down the cost of engineers to less than $12,000 a year. The industry has been growing two to three times as fast as the overall economy and this year will have revenues of about $1.6 billion.

"Economies in acute crisis have one major advantage: You can start a new company with a smaller investment and find highly skilled and motivated people very easily," says Carlos Pallotti, Datastream Systems' managing director for Latin America and president of Argentina's Association of Information Technology Companies.

DEVELOPING ARGENTINA. A software industry promotion law introduced in 2004 also gives companies big tax breaks and helped create high-tech clusters in four Argentine cities. That has attracted such companies as Walt Disney (DIS ), Microsoft (MSFT ), Peugeot, and Repsol (REP ) seeking Web-site design and software developers. In addition, IT players including Hewlett-Packard (HPQ ), Oracle (ORCL ), Cisco (CSCO ), IBM (IBM ), America Online (TWX ), and palmOne (PALM ) have consolidated their regional back-office and customer-service operations in Argentina.

In 2000, Cordoba province persuaded Motorola (MOT ) to build a $40 million software development center there, 1 of only 14 in the world, and in 2005 it scored another coup when microchip giant Intel (INTC ) agreed to set up a software research center at a local university -- just its third such facility worldwide.

"The Argentine authorities understand that technology is an engine of growth, which generates competitiveness in the global marketplace," says Esteban Galuzzi, Intel's general manager for the Southern Cone region that includes Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Paraguay, and Uruguay.

WARMING UP TO CHILE. Thanks to its economic and political stability, as well as its state-of-the-art telecom infrastructure, neighboring Chile also has attracted considerable attention as an outsourcing center. Its network of free trade agreements with a number of countries, from the U.S. to China, is another draw. Multinationals that have set up in-house outsourcing centers for software development, back-office services, and call centers include Citigroup (C ), Unilever (UN ), Eastman Kodak (EK ), and Delta Air Lines (DALRQ ).

GE outsourced all its tech support manuals for aircraft engines to a Chilean company. Hewlett-Packard found a local outfit to provide regional tech support for its imaging and printing division. And global outsourcing companies such as IBM, Accenture (ACN ), and Tata Consultancy Services provide services from Chile.

Costa Rica is the Central American country best known for the software development industry that was spawned by the 1997 arrival of Intel, which built a chip-testing facility in San Jose, the capital. A number of software development companies provide custom programming, mostly to Latin American clients, many of them in the financial industry.

WAITING FOR THE CALL. But if there's a Central American country that's coming on strong -- albeit from a minuscule base -- it's Nicaragua. After suffering through political instability in the 1970s and 1980s, its investment-promotion agency, ProNicaragua, is convinced that offshoring is the country's best bet for development.

The agency recruited Juan Carlos Pereira, a Nicaraguan-born Harvard MBA and former telecom executive who was educated in the U.S., where his family fled Nicaragua's political turmoil. "We're trying to jump-start the industry," says Pereira. The government invested $3 million to build a 500-workstation call center in downtown Managua, the capital, and is putting together a training program to improve the English skills of 7,500 people, "so that when companies come, we will be ready."

They're pitching the project to potential anchor clients, such as multinationals that may already have operations somewhere like Costa Rica but that need a lower-cost destination. And they're talking to some of the big Indian outsourcing companies that may need Spanish-speaking operators for the 38 million Hispanics living in the U.S.

POLITICAL HELP. Nicaragua may have a real chance. Ben Schneider, president of Consulting Outsourcing Management in Lima, Peru, says countries that have a free trade agreement with the U.S., such as Mexico and Chile, and more recently, the countries that signed the Central American Free Trade Agreement, including Nicaragua, will have an advantage when seeking outsourcing clients.

"It's not just a matter of tariffs, but of policies on intellectual property protection and labor rules," he says. "American companies that want to sign an outsourcing contract prefer to sign it with companies whose countries have a free trade agreement with the U.S."

Latin American outsourcing still pales in comparison to India. But Schneider says the balance could shift. International companies, he says, can't afford to do all their outsourcing in India. "There's a big time difference with the U.S., it's closer to the trouble spots in the Middle East, and India is a nuclear power."

BUILDING UP. Mexico, Brazil and Chile are the main countries to watch for offshoring in Latin America -- the first two because they have the critical mass, big company clients, and enough students graduating, and Chile because it's savvy as far as globalization goes and has been working hard on bilingual education. The rest of the region's countries, he says, occupy small niches -- for now.

That could change, though, if some of India's bigger players strategically choose to forge alliances with some of those niche operators to target U.S. and European markets.

Posted by ana at 03:13 PM

January 18, 2006

Brazilian mobile subs reach 86.21 mil. end-2005

January, 17 2006
Telecoms.com News
by James Middleton

The total number of mobile phone subscribers in Brazil grew by a net 3.85 million in December, bringing the total to 86.21 million at year-end, according to figures released by Brazilian regulator Anatel.

GSM remains the prevalent technology in the country, used by 51.77% of the market, compared to a share of 34.18% at end-2004. CDMA held a share of 27.87%, while TDMA was used by 20.2% of subscribers at end-2005.

Vivo, the joint venture of Portugal Telecom and Telefonica Moviles, held lead position with 34.54% market share, while Telecom Italia Mobile followed with 23.42%, and Claro with 21.64%.

Posted by ana at 06:39 PM

January 17, 2006

Rio state govt plans US$3.5mn wireless internet program

January 17, 2005
(BNamericas.com Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge)

Brazil's Rio de Janeiro state plans to invest 8mn reais (US$3.5mn) in 2006 in wireless internet projects, reported online tech service IDG Now!.

The focus of the investment in 2006 will be to implement high performance data communications infrastructure to allow wireless access to broadband internet in 92 municipalities.

The project, called Infovia.RJ, will also permit improved integration with other state bodies, research and training institutes, as well as supporting digital inclusion projects and e-procurement initiatives.

Started in October 2004, Infovia.RJ has already been implemented in the central administrative offices of Rio de Janeiro's state government, as well as a number of other locations.

Up to the end of 2005, Rio's state government has invested some 19.5mn reais in Infovia.RJ.

Posted by ana at 02:05 PM

December 21, 2005

Stefanini aims for US$123mn revs in 2006 - Brazil

December 20, 2005
BNamericas

Brazilian IT consultancy Stefanini IT Solutions aims to bill 290mn reais (US$123mn) in 2006, Ailton Nascimento, Stefanini's head of financial services told BNamericas.
For 2005 the IT company expects to meet its revenue target of 250mn reais, up from 210mn reais in 2004, according to Nascimento.

"This year we expect 15% of our revenues to come from outside of Brazil, whereas in 2006 we expect this to be at least 25% with growth in software exports to the USA and Europe, especially the UK," said Nascimento.

Stefanini IT Solutions also intends to make local acquisitions in 2006. "It is difficult to give a time frame, but we are analyzing three companies and probably will close a deal in six months," said Nascimento.

In 2006, Stefanini hopes to finalize a partnership with a major international IT company to support its operations in Brazil and other countries. "If this happens, it will greatly increase our expected targets," added Nascimento.

CMMI LEVEL 5
Stefanini IT Solutions has also received Capability Maturity Model integration (CMMI) level 5 certification in Brazil, a level reached only by the local units of Indian giant Tata Consultancy Services and US IT giants IBM and EDS, and some 30 others worldwide.

The CMMi certification combines a carefully chosen set of best practices based on experience in a variety of disciplines, including systems analysis and design, software engineering and management.

Although he could not quantify the value, Nascimento said that the CMMi level 5 is important for marketing and is vital overseas.

"This is important because many US companies only do offshore business with companies that have this standard," said Nascimento. "This is also true for some British and European companies," he added.

Stefanini IT Solutions has a workforce of some 3,000 consultants, of which over 10% are located outside of Brazil in Angola, Argentina, Chile, Peru, Colombia, Mexico, Spain, Portugal and the US.

The company offers three main services: IT infrastructure projects such as IT outsourcing; implementation of corporate software systems such as SAP and ERP; and developing and building applications.

Posted by ana at 12:01 PM

December 20, 2005

Stefanini Achieves Top CMMI Level

The First Consulting Company to Obtain Certification in Brazil is Now Among the 30 Level 5 Companies in the World

December 19, 2005
PRNewswire

SAO PAULO, Brazil - Stefanini IT Solutions has been granted Level 5 ranking in Capability Maturity Model Integration (CMMI), certification that confers on the company an international standard of quality in software engineering. Stefanini is the first Brazilian company to reach the top maturity level, achieving its place among 30 other companies around the world that have CMMI 5. The only organizations in Brazil to have been granted certification are multinationals.

The certification was given Friday, Dec. 16, by the renowned Software Engineering Institute (SEI) through the Canadian office of Procesix, an SEI Partner for official CMMI assessments.
Being awarded CMMI, an enhanced version of the CMM, is the result of the continuous investments Stefanini has made enhancing the services it provides both in Brazil and abroad. Since 2004, when it obtained Level 3 in CMM, the consulting company has been working in accordance with the standards required for Levels 4 and 5 certification. In early 2005, the company upgraded processes and tools in order to reach a higher level of maturity.
For Marco Stefanini, the company's president, CMMI represents a major step forward, especially for Brazil. "It's a historic milestone that shows that the business and technical ability available in our country is now comparable to that of the giants of the world's software industry," he said.
The new certification should leverage the consultant business both in Brazil and abroad even more. "CMMI is part of our investment plans to maintain our growth rate, which has varied between 20% and 30%," said Stefanini. With a strong presence abroad since 1996, the consulting company has strengthened its international operations by opening three new units in 2005 and foresees 50% to 70% in international operations within the next three years.
Founded in 1987, Stefanini is considered one of the best IT consultants in Brazil, with offices throughout the country and 12 software plants. It also has operations in Argentina, Chile, Peru, Colombia, Mexico, United States, Spain, Italy and Portugal. The company has estimated revenue for 2005 of R$250 million.

For more information, please visit: http://www.stefanini.com.br

Contact:
Debora Freire
DFREIRE Comunicacao e Negocios
Tel. +011-5511-5505-8922

Vanessa Morais
DFREIRE Comunicacao e Negocios
vanessa@dfreire.com.br

http://www.dfreire.com.br

Posted by ana at 03:07 PM

Brazil attracts technology projects performed by multinational enterprises

December 14, 2005
Gazeta Mercantil (Sao Paulo)

By mid-2007, all data centers of 17 Latin-American units of Johnson & Johnson will be concentrated in Brazil. After migration, neighboring countries will have only one basic infrastructure. From Sao Jose dos Campos, in the state of Sao Paulo, the Brazilian office will control the whole IT sector in the region.

The company counts on having only four of such centers of excellence in the whole
world. From 2000 to 2008 the IT sector in Brazil will have received US$ 30 million
in investments. "Investment used to be fragmented in the region and today it
is focused in the Country" states Jose Luiz Goncalo, J&J's vice-president of IT for Latin-America.

The plan to make Brazil a sole host of IT infrastructure is not exclusive to Johnson
& Johnson. All Motorola cell phones will have passed through the hands of Brazilians
before reaching the market, since the company chose Brazil to host the only world
center for the integration and verification of software for Motorola products & Brazil Test Center, with a US$ 20 million investment.

Two years ago, Siemens started a similar process, unifying its management system
integrated (ERP), web and e-mail servers.

IBM manages all their IT outsourcing clients in Latin-America and some in the United
States from Hortolandia, in Sao Paulo. "The Brazilian data center is a
world-renowned center, with 200 clients, locally and globally" says Ney Cruz,
the manager for the IBM center.

Brazil offers qualified and inexpensive labor, all of which contribute to attract
multinational businesses to focus their activities there. The demand for IT services
in Brazil itself is a decisive factor for the selection. At Siemens, Brazil is
responsible for 80% of IT use in all Latin-America. The main IT CIOs also point to
the robust structure of the IT sector as favoring migration. "Brazil has the
greatest volume of transactions and it already had the infrastructure of a data
center" states Siemens CIO for Mercosur, Jorge Luis Moukarzel.

According to the world CIO for Rhodia, Xavier Rambaud, it's the Brazilians
themselves who turn the spotlights on their country. "We have many
opportunities in Brazil due to low costs of living highly qualified
professionals" he explains.

In 2005 Rhodia invested US$ 7 million for the Brazilian branch to implement the
Project Americas, aiming at unifying management systems, replacing software used in
each subsidiary in the American continent for one platform only, which will serve
the group globally. Low cost qualified labor in Brazil makes it the ideal candidate
selected to manage IT for large business groups.

Posted by ana at 02:53 PM

December 19, 2005

Brazil Launches Advanced E-Reader Software

December 14, 2005

Brazil's Federal Government Data Processing Service (Serpro) has launched an electronic reader program which can transform any Portuguese text into audio, reported tech service IDG Now.

The software, based on open source, was developed jointly with Brazil's foundation for research and development (CPqD).

The software is an important tool for Brazil's digital inclusion program as it helps users with impaired sight to access literature, according to Serpro.

Posted by ana at 04:45 PM

December 12, 2005

Brazil: McInternet

December 14, 2005

The Brazilian division of US fast food chain McDonald's will offer its McInternet service in 40 Brazilian fast food outlets in the next 12 months, reported online portal Terra.

McDonald's has over 1,900 computers installed in the 460 fast food outlets it runs across the country, and each food purchase entitles clients to an hour of access.

The McInternet project was started in August 2001 in partnership with Brazil's second largest private bank, Ita (NYSE: ITU), and US hardware titan HP (NYSE: HPQ).

Posted by ana at 04:38 PM

December 10, 2005

Brasscom: Country among top 5 outsourcing destinations in 5yrs

December 9, 2005

By Tony Danby
A report by consultants AT Kearney has established a road map to make Brazil one of the world's top five offshore outsourcing destinations within five years, Antionio C R Gil, president of Brazil's association of software and services export companies (Brasscom) told BNamericas.

"Ten years ago, McKinsey drew up a report that set India on the path to becoming the world's leading IT outsourcing destination, I hope that this report will do the same for Brazil," said Gil.

The global IT outsourcing market is estimated as increasing 6% to US$640bn in 2005 compared to US$607bn in 2004, according to the AT Kearney report.

"The focus on Brazil's drive to become a leader in IT outsourcing will be on the financial industry and e-government where Brazil is already very strong," explained Gil. "We also will aim for the top part by adding value, and not for the low part," he said.

Other countries in this category are India, China, Canada and Russia.

The report highlights the need for investment in education such as English language training or IT skills to adapt Brazil to global needs. The country also requires investment in postgraduate computer science projects, according to Gil.

"There is also a need for tax incentives and a need to alter labor conditions," he added.

Brazilian IT company CPM has plowed US$10mn into its outsourcing business this year and expects to do the same in 2006, according to Gil, who is CPM's president.

The AT Kearney report charts three steps. The first step will last for 6-18 months and establish the groundwork. "Brazil needs marketing initiatives, education programs, IT curriculums and recommendations to the government on areas such as fiscal policy," said Gil.

In early February 2006, a Brazilian road show will travel to New York, Chicago, Texas and San Francisco, later visiting London, Paris and Madrid and eventually Tokyo.

The second step from 18 months to three years, will identify the value added targets and the third step will see Brazil consolidated in the top five, according to Gil.

Gil realizes that there is a huge gap between Brazil and India. "Today, Brazil has some US$300mn in outsourcing, India exports US$20bn," he said. But, "we have many ties with the US. We are very close, with easy access and a similar time zone. We have language skills, trained people, a comparable judicial system and IT experience," he added.

The biggest challenge is not competition, but internal issues, according to Gil. "This is something we know as we have 40 years of experience. Business entrepreneurs should take an aggressive approach as this is a great window of opportunity," he said.

AT Kearney was hired by Brasscom as well as Brazil's ministry of development and foreign trade and the ministry of science and technology to identify the outsourcing opportunities for the country.

Posted by ana at 12:23 PM

November 15, 2005

Brazil: The spirit of community - a look at what the Brazilian government is doing in alternative software

November 15, 2005
CNet
By Ingrid Marson

Part of a special feature on open source and developing nations,
a look at what the Brazilian government is doing in alternative software.
Spotlight project:
The Brazilian government may distribute 1 million laptops running open-source software to local schools. In January, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology launched a project to build low-cost Linux-based laptops for the developing world. The Brazilian government is considering building 2 million of these laptops, half of which will be distributed to local schools, and is investigating the finances of the scheme.

Summary
Open-source software has been deployed by the federal, state and city governments in Brazil, although the states and cities have been more progressive, according to Ronaldo Lemos, the director of the Centre for Technology &: Society at the Fundacao Getulio Vargas law school in Brazil, which recently advised Brazilian government on the its open-source strategy.
"Before the Federal government embraced free software, there had been initiatives at the city and state levels that helped to pave the way for a broader program," Lemos said.
There have been a number of large-scale migrations in Brazilian states. For example, the state of Parana is migrating 10,000 government employees from proprietary software to a customised version of the open-source collaboration application eGroupWare, and Sao Paulo has deployed Linux on 16,000 PCs and 1,000 servers in schools across the state, Linux distributor Mandriva said.
Some federal government agencies have also migrated to open-source software, with seven of the 22 federal ministries reportedly using it. This includes a number of open-source desktop deployments--for example, OpenOffice.org is run on 4000 seats in the federal government, said Erwin Tenhumberg, a product marketing manager at Sun Microsystems.
The Brazilian federal government has drafted a bill that would mandate the use of open-source software by public departments. This decree would force government departments to migrate to the software unless they can justify the continued use of closed-source products.
A few Brazilian states and municipalities have already passed laws that require public administrations to give preference to open-source software, including the states of Espirito Santo and Parana, and the cities of Amparo, Solonopole, Ribeirao Pires and Recife.
Jaques Rosenzvaig, who was the chief executive of Brazilian Linux vendor Conectiva, said in April that these laws have not affected the use of open source in these states, as they are not strictly enforced.
Francois Bancilhon, the CEO of Mandriva, which was formed from the merger of Conectiva and Mandrakesoft, agreed that in Brazil there is "more talk than action.".
"There is still a gap between what politicians want to do and what administrations are willing to implement," he said.
As well as legislative policies, the Brazilian government has also funded projects to research and promote the use of open source,. These include the CDTC (Centro de Difusao de Tecnologia e Conhcimento), a technology centre that provides training and support around open-source software.
The Brazilian government claims that the main reason for its adoption of open source software is to cut costs. "The number one reason for this change is economic," Sergio Amadeu da Silveira, the head of Brazil's National Information Technology Institute, told the BBC in an interview. "If you switch to open source software, you pay less in royalties to foreign companies."
Lemos, who advised the Brazilian government on its free software strategy, agrees that saving money is a "very important" reason for the government. Other reasons for the government's support of open source include the educational benefits from being able to access the source code, says Lemos. For example, this was seen when the Sao Paulo government set up community centres, known as telecentros, where people could access free software.
"The interesting thing that happened at the telecentros (in Sao Paulo) is that people not only started to use computers to browse the Internet, but also a significant number of people started to learn programming, by tinkering with the source code of the programs," Lemos said. "Free software creates a community of skilled programmers, that later become an important asset for the country's technological development as a whole. So the 'educational' benefits are also an important factor leading the (Brazilian) government to adopt (free and open source) software."
The adoption of free software by the public sector has also been driven by a large and active free software community in Brazil, Lemos said.
Redmonk analyst James Governor said that the Brazilian government's enthusiasm for open source is partly due to a "strong distrust of American corporations" and partly for cultural reasons. "Brazilians are very community-minded and open source fits into that," he said.
Ingrid Marson of ZDNet UK reported from London

Posted by ana at 10:08 AM

November 05, 2005

Brazil's bumpy road to the low-cost PC

November 04, 2005

Paulo Rebelo, Special to CNET News.com
It was an idea everyone loved: Develop a cheap PC that would let large numbers of Brazilians connect to the Internet. Literacy would rise, the economy would improve and the country's emerging tech sector would get a boost.

Unfortunately, it's been about six years and counting.
From 1999 to the present, the Brazilian government has made several attempts to foster cheap computers for the masses, but the efforts have foundered in a sea of red tape, political infighting, hardware issues and pricing that's still out of reach for many.
The latest incarnation, a program called "Computer for Everyone," unveiled in March by President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, aimed to sidestep some of the problems of past programs, but so far it's garnered little support from manufacturers or consumers.
"When it comes to (bringing) computers to the poor, Brazil makes a soap opera of it," said Rogerio Goncalves, a telecommunications specialist and Webmaster in Rio de Janeiro. "Every single project of digital inclusion, from the very first one until now, has never left the desk."
Brazil's experience will likely also serve as a sobering example for others in the process of launching their own programs for burgeoning populations in emerging markets. Currently, efforts are under way to bring $100 computers to the masses in India, the Caribbean and Africa. Meanwhile, Nicholas Negroponte and the Media Lab at MIT of which is he is a co-founder, have plans for widespread deployment in developing nations of a windup-powered laptop targeted at children.
India's first cheap computer, the Simputer, stumbled because of inadequate technology. Sources in India have also said that the Personal Internet Communicator, a more sophisticated device launched by Advanced Micro Devices last year, has yet to gain much momentum. The PIC has recently debuted in a few cities in Brazil.
On the software side, Microsoft has begun offering low-cost, stripped-down versions of Windows XP to fight back against both software piracy and incursions by open-source software.
Like mainland Asia a few years ago, Latin America is an exploding but difficult market. In the third quarter, PC shipments grew by 22 percent in the region, one of the fastest paces in the world, according to market researcher Gartner. The growth in part came from declining prices, consumer spending and a government-sponsored initiative in relatively prosperous Chile.
Market research firm IDC expects Brazilians to buy 5.2 millions computers this year, a 28 percent rise from 2004.
PC penetration, however, remains low compared to the overall population, and part of the reason is price. The average person simply doesn't have a sufficient level of disposable income. Minimum wage adds up to around $120 a month.
The problem is compounded in Brazil because of shipping costs and a host of taxes, which can make PCs in Brazil more expensive than those in developed nations. A PC with a 1.5GHz processor, 128MB of memory, a 40GB drive and a 15-inch monitor might go for $600. In the U.S., vendors flog similar PCs, sometimes with dial-up access, for $450 or less after rebates.
Although the Brazilian government began to champion widespread PC use in 1999, the first official program was the "Popular PC" campaign of 2001.
The Popular PC was supposed to be a $250 box. To get around Brazil's high import taxes, many of the components were going to be made domestically. Researchers from the Federal University of Minas Gerais presented a prototype with a flash drive instead of a hard drive, no CD-ROM and no floppy. The prototype proved unworkable and government support for further research fizzled. A more conventional PC architecture was tried next, but that caused the price to balloon. The first Popular PCs came out in 2002 with a price tag of around $600, higher than even the promises of a $500 box. The national government changed hands in 2002, leaving the program stranded.
"The government can't change a lot of things. Worse, many projects are left behind at every change of administration," saddling the private sector with the burden of popularizing computers, said Gilberto Galan, the Latin America representative for the Computing Technology Industry Association, or CompTIA.
Giving manufacturers a break
In January 2003, Lula became president, and within a year was championing computers for the poor. The first program was called Connected PC, which, before it actually got off the ground, morphed into Computer for Everyone.
Instead of trying to avoid import duties by manufacturing components domestically, the program gave participating manufacturers a tax break. Manufacturers essentially got a 9.25 percent reduction on PIS and Confins, two obligatory taxes, for qualifying PCs costing less than $1,000. The cost reduction is supposed to be passed on to consumers--the PCs come with a sticker announcing that 10 percent was lopped off the list price thanks to Computer for Everyone.
Additionally, consumers could buy these PCs on installment plans, paying, say, $25 a month for 24 months for a $600 PC. Internet service wasn't bundled in the price, but was supposed to be available for $4 a month. Supporters cautiously applauded the program.
Software talks get heated
"Yes, technology innovation demands a lot more, but reducing PIS and Confins taxes is a very reasonable start to advance," Ronald Martin Dauscha, president of the National Association of Research, Development and Engineering, said in an open letter to President Lula that was also signed by Luiz Fernandes Madi, president of the Brazilian Association of Technology Research Institutions.
The first problem? Only a few manufacturers applied for government approval, which came out as a "temporary provision" that the national senate had not initially endorsed. The senate recently gave its approval, so more manufacturers may apply.
Then there's the matter of pricing. The PCs still cost around $600, more than most Brazilians can afford. The $4 monthly ISP rate has proved difficult to implement because of charges associated with telephone access.
The last eight months of struggle between industry and government on Computer for Everyone also involved heated, and as yet unresolved, discussions about which kind of software should be bundled.
To obtain the tax cut, Lula initially stated that manufacturers and stores had to provide the computer with a Linux distribution--in Portuguese and user-friendly--and a whole set of free software applications, such as an office suite.
Heavily supported by Sergio Amadeu, who was until recently president of the National Institute of Information Technology, the proposal brought counterproposals from Microsoft. The Redmond, Wash.-based behemoth also began to promote Windows XP Starter Edition for Brazil.
It's not clear which way users would trend. While some say Linux does the job, others argue that, as in much of Asia, pirated versions of Windows would capture the day.
Those issues could still be in up in the air the next time a cheap PC program emerges, skeptics say.
"We have some marvelous approaches from private companies and civil associations," said Goncalves, the Webmaster in Rio de Janeiro, "but they just can't provide enough access to those who need it."

Posted by ana at 03:40 PM

November 04, 2005

Brazil Senate Passes Lula's Export Tax Cuts; Bill Goes to House

October 27, 2005

(Bloomberg) -- The Brazilian Senate passed President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva's executive order to give tax incentives to exporters after ruling coalition and opposition lawmakers widened the scope of the proposal.

Senators approved the incentives, worth 3.3 billion real ($1.5 billion) a year, and the lower house must vote on them by tomorrow to make them permanent.
The measure eliminates all taxes on exports for makers of pharmaceuticals, machinery, semiconductors and software that ship four of every five of their products abroad. To win the passage of the bill, known as MP-255, the government extended the deadline to renegotiate city debts with the federal government to 240 months from 60 months currently.
In addition, the northern state of Amapa and as many as four municipalities in northern Para state were given the status of free-trade manufacturing zones, making them equal to Manaus, the capital city of Amazonas state. With that designation, makers of technology products based in those regions are exempted from paying taxes on manufacturing.
The bill should help reduce the cost of new factory investments by about 11 percent and secure as much as $20 billion of export-oriented investment by the end of 2006, Industry and Trade Minister Luiz Fernando Furlan said in April.

Posted by ana at 03:51 PM

November 01, 2005

BRAZIL IT company Light Infocom introduces new version of its product Lightbase using Microsoft's new OS Vista

October,17 2005 –

Working in partnership with Microsoft, Brazil IT company Light Infocom is one of the first companies to launch its product in Microsoft's new operational system, Windows Vista, which will launch in 2006. The new system allows Light Infocon to offer its clients best possible solutions in object database as well as text recovery tools. "We are going to be one of the first companies  in the world with a software line that is able to explore the new technologies that will emerge with Windows Vista, bringing even more benefits to our clients," said José Antonio Leal de Farias (jalf@lightinfocon.com.br), Development Manager for Light Infocon and Microsoft MVP.

According to Light Infocon's chairman Alexandre Moura (alex@lightinfocon.com.br), the sustained investment in state of the art technologies is our commitment to our clients and the investment and upgrades to LightBase's Achitect and Commander Modules are proof of that. "We are coming to the Gartner ITxpo showcasing this new technology, which will be ready to go to market in early 2006," said Moura.

Light Infocon is a Brazilian Software Company focused on the development of on full text-retrieval database tools and related products. It develops, markets and supports its own technology "LightBase" (a database product "programming by form designing", multimedia - sound and images -, Internet access functionalities and full-text-retrieval capabilities).

LightBase is an object oriented multimedia text database with RAD-Rapid Application Development. It brings together a fast applications development environment and a powerful multidimensional data server with text recovery and a reports and application server, able to simultaneously support large projects. LightBase allows quick text recovery, and is capable of efficiently dealing with flexible text structures, such as texts, dates, values, images, etc. It stores the following type of data: date, time, values, URLs, alphanumeric values, all type of texts (from different editing programs), multimedia data (sound and images), bolean values, PDF files other MS-Office files. LightBase uses include: Interpol, Brazil's Federal Police, Gol Airlines, Bradesco Bank, Barclays Bank, Brazil's Internal Revenue Service, Brazil's Environmental Agency, Natura Cosméticos, Infraero (Brazil's FAA), and the Spanish Police.

For more information on the companies participating at the Gartner Symposium ITxpo visit www.brazil-it.com. To schedule an on site interview Light Infocom Chairman Alexandre Moura, please contact Flavia Sekles at the Brazil Information Center (202) 471-4020 or (202) 423-3080 (for the duration of the Gartner Symposium ITxpo – Oct 16th to the 21st).

Posted by talkagan at 01:54 PM

Brazil It Member Actminds Announces Strategic Plan For Entering The Iptv Market In The Us

October, 7 2005

As Brazil gets ready to make a decision on which Digital TV broadcast standard to adopt, expected in early 2006, Actminds consortium member FITec, the company engaged by the government to develop the prototypes used during the testing phase, comes to the Gartner Sysmposium and IT Expo ready to enter the US IPTV market at a time of explosive growth, armed with an extensive body of knowledge.

According to Actminds director Fabio Frias, FITec has been actively participating in partnerships with other R&D institutions involved in the development of interactive middleware for the Brazilian DTV System. Within this program, FITec, and by extension ActMinds, is consolidating its position as a Center for Excellence in IPTV Systems and Applications.

At the Gartner Symposium and ITExpo, Actminds will showcase the scope of its knowledge base and existing experience in IPTV, in order to identify strategic partnerships with American Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEMs). Through these partnerships, Actminds also hopes to become a provider of high end IPTV R&D to Networking and Internetworking companies. Actminds – through FITec, offers both hardware and software design from system specification all the way to productization (overall product development solutions) and field support in VOIP, IPTV and Wireless Broadband Access.

It is expected that worldwide IP video services will more than quadruple, from under 2 million subscribers to over 8 million users in 2006 – just 2 years, as telecom companies explore new ways to expand their revenue. Like the United States, Brazil will be one of the regions fastest growing markets for IPTV, as local governments implement incentive policies for the dissemination of the technology which, it is expected, will drastically increase the number of Brazilians with access with Internet access.

Many US companies have been actively lobbying the US and Brazilian governments to adopt the US DTV standards, known as ATSC. If Brazil adopts a similar system to the US, Brazil will become both a key provider of emerging technologies for this market for the US, as well as the gateway for implementation of IPTV for all of Latin America. "This is a potentially huge market," said Fabio Frias, "and we are well placed to capture a large slice of the high end R&D which Networking and Internetworking companies will demand as the market expands."

ActMinds is a global provider of IT Solutions and R&D Services, offering a variety of high-quality customized services to key vertical markets, including banking & finance, telecom, manufacturing and healthcare. ActMinds offers the capabilities of a modern Outsourcing Development Center which, in association with strong capabilities in project management and the worldwide recognized Brazilian skills in software development, has produced an extensive track record of successful projects.

ActMinds receives promotional funding from Apex Brasil, Brazil's Trade and Investment Promotion Agency.

For more information or to schedule an interview with Fabio G. Frias please call Flavia Sekles at 202-471-4020.

Posted by talkagan at 01:51 PM

Focal points of Brazil's excellence in the Information Technology Industry

October 16th, 2005

Brazil IT services and software development span the whole spectrum, but there are a few focal points where Brazilian innovation has been recognized globally as models.

• Banking

Brazil's banking system is renowned for its efficiency and the Brazilian Payment System (Sistema de Pagamentos Brasileiro or SPB) is a good example of how Brazilian IT companies are prepared to understand complex business requirements, develop and implement home grown world class solutions. Since the mid 1990s Brazil has overhauled its payments system in order to cope with the period of hyper inflation which the country lived in the beginning of that decade.

Operated by the Central Bank of Brazil, the SPB allows all inter-bank transfer of funds in Brazil to be made in real time, which greatly reduces systemic risks: the risk that if a bank goes bankrupt it leads other institutions to break in a domino effect. With a high degree of automation, the SPB operates with increasing use of electronic means to transfer funds and settle obligations, and nearly 100 per cent of all securities are dematerialized.

Overall, the development of the SPB was focused in strengthening the financial institutions and decreasing the government stake in banking activities with the goal of reducing the chances of an eventual crisis in the financial system and, therefore, in the country’s economy. Today Brazil’s inflation rate (projected by the Central Bank in 5.1% for 2005) is under control and the economy is growing healthily.

• Electronic ballots

The Brazilian voting system is among the most modern in the world. Since 1996, all votes in national elections in Brazil are cast through electronic ballots, which allow results to be known within 24 hours. The system was initially developed in the 80s, when Brazil returned to democratic rule. The country has invested heavily in the modernization of its electoral machinery, spending over half a billion dollars in the last four years alone.

In the last national election, over 110 million voters participated, electing 5,559 mayors and 48,015 municipal council members. They voted at 332,000 polling stations nationwide, from Indian reserves in the most remote areas of the Amazon to heavily populated southern cities of Brazil. Once the polls close, votes are counted electronically and the results of each precinct is encrypted and recorded on a diskette by the voting machine. This information is then sent online to the regional electoral court in the capital of each state.

Finally, the results are certified and immediately retransmitted to the Superior Electoral Court in Brasilia, Brazil’s capital, and made public. Hackers do not pose a risk, for the system is completely isolated from other online services. The electronic ballots, designed to accommodate people who don’t read or with disabilities, won the people’s confidence and decreased voting fraud. The Brazilian voting system has been adapted by other nations and, in the next months, the country will send its electronic balloting system to Honduras, Bolivia and Panama.

• Tax collection

Brazil was a pioneer in the development of online tax statements filing, and today 95% of individual taxpayers and 100% of corporations file their returns online, in a secure system able to simultaneously process thousands of filings (last year, the system received about 30 million documents). Created in 1997, the E-taxation application developed in Brazil is cost efficient and has greatly increased compliance with tax administration procedures. The system has a digital certification mechanism developed to protect taxpayers’ information.

• Open-source software

In a ground-breaking decision, Brazil announced this year that it will gradually adopt the use of open-source software in ministries and state owned companies in an attempt to save hundreds of million dollars a year by switching from Windows to free alternatives, like Linux. The Brazilian government believes this is a vital development issue in a country where Internet expansion – in terms of number of people served – still has much potential. Through tax breaks, the government is subsidizing the sale of computers based on open-source software to low-income families.

To discuss these and other technologies, please visit the Brazil IT booth and several other Brazilian IT providers, located in the Outsourcing and IT Services Marketplace. For more information, visit www.brazil-it.com. To schedule interviews with Brazilian IT executives, please contact Flavia Sekles at the Brazil Information Center, (202) 471-4020 or (202) 423-3080 (for the duration of the Gartner Symposium ITxpo 2005).

Posted by talkagan at 01:49 PM

Why choose Brazil as your IT products and services outsourcing provider

Washington, DC, Oct. 16th, 2005

Brazil has great potential to compete globally in the IT products and services outsourcing industry. The country has long been a pioneer in the development of software solutions, such as a real-time national banking network; an electronic balloting system that shows results of national elections within 24 hours; and an Internet income tax filing process used by nearly all taxpayers. In addition, Brazil offers near-shore IT services in a wide range of industry sectors for US clients, low costs, specialized labor force, quality certifications and similar time zone to the US.

The country's US$ 10 billion IT market is similar in size to India's, the global leader in outsourcing. The main difference between Brazil and India is the amount of IT exports. India ships about 70% of its production, compared to only 1.5% for the South American nation. Brazil's aim, however, is not to compete head-to-head with India, or other emerging IT outsourcing nations such as China, but to focus on local advantages that will enable it to develop niches in outsourcing. According to a research paper published by Gartner in December 2004 on the Latin America IT market, local advantages include "a flexible, creative workforce; sensitivity to customer needs; established relationship with global companies and expertise in certain application segments as well as low costs and workdays that overlap with North American and Europe."

Recently, the Brazilian government adopted an Industrial Modernization, Innovation and Technological Development program as a means to promote economic growth and improve the country's overall competitiveness and efficiency. Two policies included in the program regard the creation of a favorable environment for private and public investments and the enhancement of Brazil's technological base in areas that show the highest potential for growth, such as the software and IT services industry. Furthermore, the government recently announced that it would suspend federal taxes on exports of computer hardware and software and telecommunications services for five years. Brazil already offers special credit lines to technology companies that are focusing on foreign markets and has a goal of increasing the industry's exports to US$ 2 billion by 2007.

In its market research, Gartner foresees Latin America's IT market reaching US$ 134 billion this year, and, notably Brazil and Mexico, becoming challengers in application development outsourcing and niche business process outsourcing by 2007. The consulting firm recommends that global companies evaluate Latin America as a potential base for IT and business process work that requires creativity and high-end resources and low cost. "Consider Latin American countries for specialized offerings, including data center hosting, provision of regional centers of excellence and call centers, business process outsourcing, iterative software development for vertical industries, and sensitive and secure software development," write the analysts.

For more information visit www.brazil-it.com. To schedule interviews with Brazilian IT executives, please contact Flavia Sekles at the Brazil Information Center, (202) 471-4020 or (202) 423-3080 (for the duration of the Gartner Symposium/ITxpo).

Posted by talkagan at 01:47 PM

About the Brazil IT exhibitors participating at the Outsourcing and IT Services Marketplace during the Gartner Symposium/ITxpo 2005

October 16th, 2005

The Outsourcing and IT Services Marketplace at the Gartner Symposium/ITxpo 2005 showcases several Brazilian IT companies represented in six booths. Brazil is a pioneer in the development of new software solutions, offering the United States near-shore IT Services in a wide range of industry sectors. Brazil's US$ 10 billion digital economy is led by world class talent. Our engineers are specialized, qualified and creative. Brazilian IT companies also offer competitive pricing and the convenience of being only one time zone away from New York.

• Brazil IT – Booth 101

An effort by several Brazilian IT services and solutions providers to open up a world of opportunities in your front-yard, Brazil IT is the future of near-shore outsourcing for US companies committed to gaining competitiveness by reducing costs, while working with highly qualified IT developers within the same time zone and cultural boundaries. Brazil IT is at booth 101, and counts with the presence of executives from companies located in Ceara, Brasilia and Paraiba, three major IT clusters in Brazil. Brazil IT is funded by Apex Brasil, the Brazilian Trade and Investment Promotion Agency.

• Actminds – Booth 100

Focused on Application Development Outsourcing, Application Management Outsourcing and Research and Development, Actminds is a global IT services provider, led by a team of highly qualified and certified professionals (CMM and PMI). Actminds clients include Johnson & Johnson, Janssen Cilag, BankBoston, Goldman Sachs, Lucent Technologies, General Motors and Volkswagen.

• Stefanini – Booth 102

With 18 years of experience serving clients in the US, Latin America and Europe, Stefanini delivers IT services on time and on budget worldwide. Its portfolio of services includes custom application development and maintenance, Business Solutions for ERP and CRM and Infrastructure projects. Stefanini serves clients in a number of industry sectors, such as telecom, financial, oil & gas and pharmaceutical. Some of its clients are Whirlpool, Johnson & Johnson and Clorox.

• Noordtek – Booth 103

With over 10 years of experience, Noordtek is focused on innovation and excellence at competitive prices, offering clients a mix of tools and technologies for leading edge, full-cycle application development. Noordtek is specialized in solution for finance, telecom, health, education, network security, e-commerce, manufacturing, retail and e-government. Its clients include Bank Boston, Motorola, ABN Amro/REAL, Brazilian Yellow pages, Nokia, LG and Samsung.

• Softex – Booth 105

The Softex Association is a civil society organization of public interest devoted to the promotion of excellence in the Brazilian software industry. By means of a network of agents, the program offers products and services ranging from financial processes for software enterprises to providing support to these enterprises for obtaining quality and maturity certifications. Business promotion is also an asset. Softex also sponsors national events devoted to software quality and business development.

• Politec – Booth 107

Politec delivers world-class outsourcing solutions for Application Lifecycle Management. Along with superior AMD (Application Development and Maintenance) Services, the company's services focus on system integration, legacy transformation, distributed monitoring, IT managed services/ staff augmentation and help desk. Politec clients include the U.S. Department of State, FBI, Executive Office of the President of Brazil, Petrobras, Metlife and Microsoft.
           
For more information, visit www.brazil-it.com. To schedule interviews with Brazilian IT executives, please contact Flavia Sekles at the Brazil Information Center, (202) 471-4020 or (202) 423-3080 (for the duration of the Gartner Symposium/ITxpo).

Posted by talkagan at 01:46 PM

Case Study: All Motorola's mobile phones pass through testing process in Brazil

October 16th, 2005

Global communications leader Motorola will present its successful experience with information technology development and services in Brazil, as a Solution Provider Presentation during the Gartner Symposium/ITxpo. Motorola has chosen the South American country as its only global center for mobile phone software testing. Since October 2005, all mobile phones manufactured by the company pass through a rigorous testing process in the Brazil Test Center, which concentrates activities previously done in several parts of the world, such as Russia, India and the United States.

"We have the responsibility to drive the global expertise for tests in this field", says Silvio Meira, chief-scientist for C.E.S.A.R., one of the Brazilian IT companies involved in the project. The number of software engineers working on this project will reach 280 during an 18 month contract, the first phase of which ends in March/2006. This initiative is part of Motorola Brazil’s program for technological development, which has invested over US$ 200 million in similar projects since 1997.

With global revenues of more than US$ 31 billion in 2004, Motorola has chosen Brazil to be its manufacturing base in South America and an export platform, shipping products to the US, Argentina, Venezuela and Mexico. Since 1995, the company has invested a total of US$ 492 million in R&D, increasing capacity and hiring people.

The presentation will be held on Oct. 19th, from 4:30 to 5:30 at Dolphin-Southern 4-5 by Rosana Fernandes, Director of Software Operations for Mobile Devices at Motorola Brazil, responsible for Brazil Test Center operations and for partnership coordination with main Brazilian software organizations.

For more information visit www.brazil-it.com. To schedule interviews, please contact Flavia Sekles at the Brazil Information Center, (202) 471-4020 or (202) 423-3080 (for the duration of the Gartner Symposium/ITxpo).

Posted by talkagan at 01:42 PM

July 25, 2005

Brazil: A Hot Incubator For Tech Startups

July, 25 2005
BusinessWeek

Recife's business park is helping power a $10 billion industry in the country.
In a darkened room in Recife, Brazil, a half-dozen youths peer at glowing computer screens, battling it out in a multi-user game. This is no cybercafé, but rather the offices of Jynx Playware, a budding Brazilian designer of computer games aiming for sales of $400,000 this year.

"The first requirement if you want to work here is you have to be a gamer," says André Araujo, 32, one of Jynx's five founding partners. Advertisement

Think of the global information-technology industry, and your first thought isn't of Brazil. Yet Brazil's IT industry has been growing at a 10% annual clip since 2000, according to São Paulo researcher E-Consulting Corp., and now boasts sales of $10 billion a year. Exports of high-tech goods and services should rise from around $500 million last year to $2 billion by 2007, predicts Trade Minister Luiz Fernando Furlan.

Recife's Porto Digital, a business park in the northeastern state of Pernambuco, shows how it can be done. The colonial town's once-crumbling port district is now home to Jynx and 84 other IT startups employing 2,000 people and generating combined revenues of some $100 million. "It has all grown much more quickly than we expected," says Valério Veloso, a former investment banker who in May became president of the public-private sector initiative, launched in 2000, to support new ventures. To get the project off the ground, the state government kicked in $18.3 million, while the city of Recife and the federal government have pitched in with tax incentives and cheap loans.

PARENT OF 30 COMPANIES
Porto Digital's startups can count on a ready pool of talent, courtesy of the Federal University of Pernambuco (UFPE), which boasts one of the best computer-science departments in all of Latin America. The school began teaching programmers to use Sun Microsystems Inc.'s (SUNW ) Java language in 1996, the year it was introduced. Professors at the school also teamed up to launch Centro de Estudos e Sistemas Avançados do Recife (C.E.S.A.R), a business incubator that has played a vital role in the birth of some 30 companies.

One of C.E.S.A.R'S star progeny is Jynx. The 20-person operation uses artificial intelligence and cutting-edge graphics software developed in-house to produce sophisticated virtual-reality games for use in business training. It has also developed so-called advergames for Coca-Cola Co.'s (KO ) Brazilian Web site and for Brasil Telecom, an operator partly controlled by Telecom Italia. Another C.E.S.A.R offspring is Meantime, a maker of games for mobile handsets whose clients include Motorola Inc. (MOT ) and Verizon (VZ ). "Games are one of the most complex areas of computer programming," says Roberto Soboll, Motorola's director of engineering for Latin America. "In Recife they understood that early on and began teaching games programming at the UFPE. The idea is not to create experts in games but to develop complete software developers."

Porto Digital won't turn Brazil into an India overnight. And many in the industry feel the government should be doing more to promote IT development. "If you look at South Korea, they have become the global standard for network games because the government decided to invest in connectivity and training," says Ivair Rodriguez, a São Paulo analyst at global IT consultancy IDC. Still, Rodriguez stresses that Brazil does have world-class talent, especially in Java, open software, and electronic security -- all fields in which the Porto Digital companies are strong. If high-tech startups can flower in one of Brazil's least-developed states, it's a sign Brazil may have a shot at creating a digital economy.

Posted by ana at 03:22 PM

November 01, 2004

Brazil IT broadens its presence at the Gartner Symposium/ITxpo 2005

October 16th, 2005

Brazil IT, a group of IT services and development companies under the Apex-Brasil (Trade and Investment Promotion Agency) umbrella, appears for the second time at the Gartner Symposium/ITxpo 2005 in Orlando, October 16th-21st. Reflecting on its successful attendance in 2004, this year Brazil IT has broadened its presence at the event, participating as a sponsor in the Outsourcing and IT Services Marketplace, and representing nearly 200 Brazilian providers. Backed by a strong push by the Brazilian government to increase the industry's exports, Brazilian IT companies are focusing on the US market, which has the highest potential for growth.

Brazil's US$ 10 billion IT industry is the world's seventh biggest, making it only slightly smaller than India's. Today, it is estimated that Brazil only exports 1.5% of its IT industry production. However, the government and private sector are investing heavily in global promotion of Brazilian capabilities with the goal of increasing exports to US$ 2 billion by 2007.

"Exports are now at around $300 million. It is a very ambitious target, but the private sector tells us it's possible," said Luiz Fernando Furlan, minister of Development, Industry and Commerce. "We have all the conditions to be a player in the world software market. We have a good infrastructure of telecommunications and energy. We have the domestic market. We have more than 6,000 PhDs in technology coming out every year. The cost of production in Brazil is much lower than U.S., Europe, and Japan. We can deal with Europe and Japan in the daylight."

Renata Sanches, IT project manager for Apex-Brazil, believes the Gartner Symposium/ITxpo is strategic to disseminate knowledge about Brazil as a highly technological country "and to show this very specialized audience that our IT industry is well prepared, with competitive and qualified products and services." "This has been called one of the world's best kept secret, and it is our intention that everyone hears about it," said Ms. Sanches.

The companies represented by Brazil IT have as their goal closing over US$ 30 million worth of deals during the Gartner Symposium/ITxpo 2005, compared to US$ 27.7 million last year.

There are several reasons to believe that Brazil has the necessary conditions to be a major player in the global IT sector:
Software: Brazil has long been a pioneer in the development of solutions in banking systems and e-government.
IT Services: Brazil offers near-shore IT Services in a wide range of industry sectors.
Quality: Brazil's US$ 10 billion digital economy is led by world class talent.
Pricing: Decreased IT costs when compared to developed nations.
Time Zone: Brazil is only one time zone away from New York.
Labor force: Brazil offers specialized, qualified and creative technicians.
Stability: As well as an established democracy, Brazil has a better geopolitical standing than many Asian countries that today lead the outsourcing market.

Brazil IT
Launched in 2004, the Brazil IT brand represents hundreds of Brazilian IT companies interested in promoting Brazil as the next stop in the global rush for competitive software development services and information technology market growth. If you want to enhance the value and quality of your IT development and services through the use of Brazilian services providers: "Brazil it!"

For more information on the companies participating at the Gartner Symposium ITxpo visit www.brazil-it.com. To schedule interviews with Brazilian IT executives, please contact Flavia Sekles at the Brazil Information Center (202) 471-4020 or (202) 423-3080 (for the duration of the Gartner Symposium ITxpo – Oct 16th to the 21st).

Posted by talkagan at 01:28 PM

October 13, 2004

Brazil's Soft Spot For Software

September 27, 2004

Development, Industry & Trade Minister Luiz Fernando Furlan explains why the country is intently focusing on this sector

Luiz Fernando Furlan, Brazil's Minister of Development, Industry & Foreign Trade, has the goal of developing a thriving domestic information-technology industry in his country. He discussed with BusinessWeek Senior Writer Steve Hamm the challenges involved in making the plan a reality. Following are edited excerpts of their conversation:

Q: Brazil has announced a new industrial policy, with software as a key element. Why did you identify software as a target, and what are you planning on doing about it?
A: Brazil is a well-known exporter of agricultural products, iron ore, steel. This generates a lot of trade and hard currency. At the same time, more and more we're producing and exporting value-added products. We're one of the major players in the aircraft industry. We have six international companies producing cell phones in Brazil for the domestic market and for export.

Brazil has an advantage. Due to the large domestic market we can have the economies of scale not only for the domestic market but for export.

Now, in capital goods, we want to use new technologies to modernize our production platform. In the IT area, we want to focus on software. We're the sixth- or seventh-largest market for software worldwide. We have an $8 million market for software.

We have hundreds of small and medium enterprises developing software in Brazil and supplying companies. We have the basic skills. But Brazilian companies don't have the channels to access foreign markets, and we don't have the size. We need to give to the production chain opportunities to develop.

We have all the conditions to be a player in the world software market. We have a good infrastructure of telecommunications and energy. We have the domestic market. We have more than 6,000 PhDs in technology coming out every year. The cost of production in Brazil is much lower than U.S., Europe, and Japan. We can deal with Europe and Japan in the daylight.

We have a target to improve our IT exports to $2 billion in 2007 -- software and services. Now it's $100 million. It's very ambitious. But the private sector tells us it's possible.

Q: How important is software and IT services to the future of Brazil's economy.
A: For us, software and IT has the same importance as capital goods. In this way, we can modernize the whole structure of production in Brazil. It's a horizontal spreading of competitiveness. You enhance the sector, but it spreads much further.

Q: Is there another country that's a model for Brazil.
A: We're building up our own model. We have seen Ireland, India. We look at other countries. We can't buy a canned model. We have a base already.

We can get a space worldwide in software for small enterprises. In some cases we can provide for government. Brazil has good experiences in electronic tax collection. Ninety-seven percent of the reports to the internal revenue [department] is made through the Internet. And Brazil has state-of-the-art electronic banking. It was the heritage of our periods of inflation. The cost of money, overnight, could go up 0.5%, so the banking system invested a lot due to the very high interest rates. It's part of the Brazilian life. It's an asset.

The niche we want is applications. We don't want to have low-cost labor rewriting programs.

Q: I understand Brazil doesn't have a venture-capital industry. Is there any effort to try to develop it?
A: We launched a credit line at the National Development Bank for small and medium-size software companies. We dedicated $30 million. Seventy percent of the money was taken in three months. We'll dedicate more resources to this area. It's a nontraditional industry, so the tools for venture and risk capital are being built.

Q: Is piracy a problem in Brazil?
A: It's a big problem. We have a new bill approved in the Congress to deepen enforcement. On the other hand, we're reforming the National Institute for Intellectual Property. It's like NIST [National Institute of Science & Technology] in the U.S.

Posted by ana at 01:39 PM

October 05, 2004

Venture Capital Funds return to the Brazilian IT sector

October 5, 2005
Gazeta Mercantil (Sao Paulo)

Sao Paulo financial daily Gazeta Mercantil reported on Oct. 5th that venture capital funds are investing once again in Brazilian IT companies, though in a more selective pattern than during the Internet "boom."

According to research done by Bain & Company, private funds are investing up to 20% of the value of selected IT companies. One example is the Intel Capital Fund, which has invested in three Brazilian IT companies this year: Yavox, Certising, Digitron.

Funds are looking into several IT companies in Brazil, though Bain concludes that investment in Brazil is still much lower than in other countries. Funds are also looking for return within specific time frames - and may divest at any time, from five to seven years after initial investment.

According to research done by KPMG, there have been 258 mergers and acquisitions in the IT sector in Brazil since 1994, with the highest number in 2000, when the Internet boom went bust.

Posted by ana at 02:03 PM

September 30, 2004

Brazil Is a Trailblazer When it Comes to Computer Use

September 28, 2005
By Jack Chang and Knight Ridder

While Brazilians live with levels of poverty and violence that mark them as Third World citizens, they are emerging as trailblazers in the kind of high technology that's propelling many First World economies.
Evolving fields such as open-source software, online banking and social networking through the Internet are finding a welcome home in this nation of more than 180 million people.

So are legions of sophisticated hackers, who regularly make international headlines with their exploits.

On the Front Line
That combination of high-tech savvy and lawlessness has pushed Brazil to the front line of some of the hottest technology debates, such as those over intellectual property rights and corporate control of media.
It also has placed the country in the crosshairs of media companies fighting losing battles against pirated wares.
On the economic front, Brazilians have yet to build an information technology industry on par with those in other developing countries such as India and Malaysia.
But this Latin American giant is coming up with new uses for technology, many of them geared toward opening access to people who would otherwise be excluded.
"We are at the forefront of the Third World, and we have the same opportunities that the First World has to compete now," said Marcelo D'Elia Branco, coordinator of Projeto Software Livre Brasil, which advocates greater access to software. The name means Free Software Project Brazil in English.
"Information technology and Brazilians were a perfect marriage," D'Elia Branco said. "Brazilians historically were interested in innovation, but they didn't have good schools or universities, so they depended on their own creativity."
Acknowledging the Divide
"The Internet is all about this kind of grassroots creativity."
Of course, technological inequality persists in Brazil, which the United Nations recently said has one of the largest gaps between rich and poor in the world.
Although the number of Brazilians with Internet access -- more than 22 million -- puts the nation among the world's top 10 online countries, that's only 12 percent of the population. By comparison, 69 percent of Americans have Internet access.
Those Brazilians depend on pirated technology that costs a fraction of the price of legal wares. About 60 percent of software and 70 percent of hardware used by Brazilians break copyright laws, according to estimates by tech companies and consultants.
Those who do use technology, however, are avid users, and they've led the high-tech world in key fields.
One area has been the production of hackers, people who break into networks, increasingly for the purpose of stealing data or money.
According to electronic security experts, about 80 percent of the world's computer hackers operate from Brazil. In late August, Brazilian police arrested 85 people on suspicion of hacking into online domestic bank accounts and making off with more than US$33 million.
Investment Coming
The country is also making its mark by building its own nascent information technology industry, which now makes $10 billion in annual sales.
This summer, the Mountain View, Calif.-based tech giant Google (Nasdaq: GOOG) gave Brazilian technology a vote of confidence by opening a sales office in Sao Paulo and buying the Brazilian firm Akwan Information Technologies, which specializes in online search engines.
"It's happening slowly, but businesses are investing," said Ronaldo Lemos, a professor at the Getulio Vargas Foundation, a Brazilian research and educational institute. "We don't have the language advantages that India has, but we have the people."
Perhaps the area in which Brazil has made its biggest mark has been the promotion and use of open-source software, which people can download and install at no cost and help update by manipulating its source code.
The operating system Linux has been the mostly widely used open-source program in Brazil. It runs computers in government offices, universities and even supermarkets, Lemos said.
"We see free software as a means to promote social inclusion," said Djalma Valois Filho, coordinator of the federal government's open-source software implementation program.
"We are developing technological literacy in Brazil, and this is an affordable way to bring technology to people," Valois said.
That philosophy of free use has also meant official support for stretching patent laws on a range of products, from generic AIDS drugs to copyrighted music.
"Because it's such a huge market, Brazil has been able to use its financial clout to engineer common use at much cheaper prices," said Harvard University law professor William Fisher, who has advised the Brazilian government on intellectual property law issues.
Modern World
In the former coffee town of Pirai near Rio de Janeiro, Mayor Luiz Fernando de Souza has taken that idea of common use to its logical conclusion.
Seeing Internet access as vital to Pirai's economic survival, de Souza decided four years ago to connect his 23,600 neighbors in one fell swoop. He set up transmitting stations in the hills above town and sent wireless, broadband Internet access to everyone with a computer.
That originally meant just government buildings and schools, but has since expanded to include many private homes, de Souza said.
"The world today, you can't do anything without the Internet," he said. "It was just the practical thing to do. And Brazilians are very creative people."
Brazilians are also some of the world's most sociable people and have embraced technology such as social networking Web sites that help people meet each other.
Scan the U.S.-based social networking site Orkut, which claims about 10 million users worldwide, and profiles in Portuguese are sure to pop up. More than three-quarters of those who use the Google-sponsored site list Brazil as their country of residence.
"We just consume things like instant messenger and Orkut," said Sao Paulo graduate student Luis Roberto Inui, 31, who previously was a financial software developer. "If you go into any office in Brazil, you'll see people on Orkut."
Granting Access
Much of Brazilian technology is being developed on an ad hoc basis by young, inspired people such as Ricardo Ruiz, 28, who, along with four other programmers, toil in a second-floor office in the heart of Rio's historic Lapa district.
Using a Linux-based local network linking four computers rebuilt from old parts, the crew, many of them sporting sandals and dreadlocked hair, maintain Web sites and provide tech support for community centers run by Brazil's culture ministry.
Those centers allow people to record music, video and other art and post them on a free, online database accessible to anyone.
"What we're doing at the cultural centers is just like open-source software," Ruiz said. "We're bringing in talent from all over Brazil to design the program and the technology behind it. And we're showing the world it can be done."

Posted by samir at 10:24 AM

September 08, 2004

Brazil Unveils Semiconductor Industry Ambitions

September 07, 2005

Brazilian authorities announced ambitious plans to establish a semiconductor industry in the Brazilian state of Minas Gerais, where 4 million square meters (approximately 990 acres) are being dedicated to semiconductor and semiconductor-related manufacturing and design.

Brazil Unveils Semiconductor Industry Ambitions

BELO HORIZONTE, Minas Gerais, Brazil--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Sept. 7, 2005--Brazilian authorities announced ambitious plans to establish a semiconductor industry in the Brazilian state of Minas Gerais, where 4 million square meters (approximately 990 acres) are being dedicated to semiconductor and semiconductor-related manufacturing and design. The Minas Gerais Technological Park will be anchored by Companhia Brasileira de semiconductores ("CBS"). CBS is planning an analog and mixed signal semiconductor wafer fabrication facility ("fab") which will run high-voltage CMOS, Bipolar, BiCMOS, and other specialized processes. The target completion date of the first CBS fab is early 2007.
In addition to semiconductor manufacturing, the Brazilian government is sponsoring the creation of a cluster of semiconductor design houses which will feed Brazilian and other worldwide wafer fabs. Brazil's "Eldorado" project aims to attract foreign semiconductor design companies to Brazil while creating indigenous Brazilian design companies as well.
Brazil is one of the so-called "BRIC Countries" (Brazil, Russia, India, and China) that are now approaching about half the economic size of the G6 countries (U.S., Japan, U.K., Germany, France, and Italy). According to a seminal report issued by Wall Street investment bank Goldman Sachs, when taken together the BRICs could be larger than the G6 by 2039 in GDP terms. With today's advanced economies representing a decreasing amount of the worldwide economy, shifts in spending patterns will present major opportunities for corporations and investors in emerging markets, especially Brazil. "Brazil is already a major maker and exporter of advanced high-technology products such as aircraft, consumer electronics, and cell phones and is making the necessary infrastructure and industrial investment to step onto the world stage in semiconductor manufacturing and design. The technological park in Minas Gerais, and CBS in particular, are clear indicators of Brazil's direction and commitment," stated Dr. Wolfgang Sauer, the CEO and co-founder of CBS and former president of Volkswagen Brazil, Robert Bosch Brazil, Autolatina and special advisor on industrialization to various South American governments. "For strategic reasons many companies want to have semiconductor manufacturing located in multiple economic and geographic zones. A Brazilian semiconductor industry offers a real alternative to the concentration of semiconductor manufacturing in Asia."
About CBS
CBS (Companhia Brasileira de semiconductores), located in the Minas Gerais Technological Park, is Brazil's flagship semiconductor manufacturing venture. CBS is backed by various Brazilian development banks and private investors worldwide. The company is focusing on analog and mixed signal foundry and standard products for consumer, automotive, and industrial applications worldwide. Additional company information can be found at http://www.cbs-semi.com.

Contacts
CommChips for Companhia Brasileira de semiconductores
Bill Boldt, 866-660-2447, ext. 708
bill.boldt@commchips.com

Posted by samir at 10:55 AM

August 17, 2004

Brazil: A Hot Incubator For Tech Startups

July 25, 2005
By Jonathan Wheatley, BusinessWeek Online

Recife's business park is helping power a $10 billion industry in the country

In a darkened room in Recife, Brazil, a half-dozen youths peer at glowing computer screens, battling it out in a
multi-user game. This is no cybercafe, but rather the offices of Jynx Playware, a budding Brazilian designer of
computer games aiming for sales of $400,000 this year. "The first requirement if you want to work here is you
have to be a gamer," says Andre Araujo, 32, one of Jynx's five founding partners.

Think of the global information-technology industry, and your first thought isn't of Brazil. Yet Brazil's IT industry
has been growing at a 10% annual clip since 2000, according to Sao Paulo researcher E-Consulting Corp., and
now boasts sales of $10 billion a year. Exports of high-tech goods and services should rise from around $500
million last year to $2 billion by 2007, predicts Trade Minister Luiz Fernando Furlan.

Recife's Porto Digital, a business park in the northeastern state of Pernambuco, shows how it can be done. The colonial town's once-crumbling port district is now home to Jynx and 84 other IT startups employing 2,000 people and generating combined revenues of some $100 million. "It has all grown much more quickly than we expected," says Valério Veloso, a former investment banker who in May became president of the public-private
sector initiative, launched in 2000, to support new ventures. To get the project off the ground, the state
government kicked in $18.3 million, while the city of Recife and the federal government have pitched in with tax
incentives and cheap loans.

PARENT OF 30 COMPANIES

Porto Digital's startups can count on a ready pool of talent, courtesy of the Federal University of Pernambuco
(UFPE), which boasts one of the best computer-science departments in all of Latin America. The school began
teaching programmers to use Sun Microsystems Inc.'s (SUNW ) Java language in 1996, the year it was
introduced. Professors at the school also teamed up to launch Centro de Estudos e Sistemas Avançados do
Recife (C.E.S.A.R), a business incubator that has played a vital role in the birth of some 30 companies.
One of C.E.S.A.R'S star progeny is Jynx. The 20-person operation uses artificial intelligence and cutting-edge
graphics software developed in-house to produce sophisticated virtual-reality games for use in business training.
It has also developed so-called advergames for Coca-Cola Co.'s (KO ) Brazilian Web site and for Brasil
Telecom, an operator partly controlled by Telecom Italia. Another C.E.S.A.R offspring is Meantime, a maker of
games for mobile handsets whose clients include Motorola Inc. (MOT ) and Verizon (VZ ). "Games are one of
the most complex areas of computer programming," says Roberto Soboll, Motorola's director of engineering for
Latin America. "In Recife they understood that early on and began teaching games programming at the UFPE.
The idea is not to create experts in games but to develop complete software developers."

Porto Digital won't turn Brazil into an India overnight. And many in the industry feel the government should be
doing more to promote IT development. "If you look at South Korea, they have become the global standard for
network games because the government decided to invest in connectivity and training," says Ivair Rodriguez, a
Sao Paulo analyst at global IT consultancy IDC. Still, Rodriguez stresses that Brazil does have world-class
talent, especially in Java, open software, and electronic security -- all fields in which the Porto Digital companies
are strong. If high-tech startups can flower in one of Brazil's least-developed states, it's a sign Brazil may have a
shot at creating a digital economy.

http://www.businessweek.com/print/premium/content/05_30/b3944085_mz058.htm?c... 17/07/2005

Posted by samir at 06:21 PM

July 21, 2004

Image problem hurting Brazil

Sun Apr 24,11:01 AM ET
By Karl Schoenberger, Mercury News

Brazil has ambitions to promote itself as a place for software services off shoring, but first it needs to overcome an image problem, the country's trade minister said Friday during a visit to the Bay Area.

"Our potential in technology is not known,'' said Luiz Fernando Furlan, who was chairman of Brazil's largest agri-business concern, Sao Paulo-based Sadia, before taking his government post three years ago. "The image of Brazil is soccer, coffee and samba, not sophisticated high technology products. But that's out of date.''

Airplanes and aircraft parts are Brazil's largest exports today.

Furlan described some of the other advances that Brazilian engineers have made in recent years that have gone unnoticed. Sophisticated fund-management software that makes split-second calculations grew out of the banking crisis in the early 1990s, when the Brazilian currency collapsed and inflation was running at close to 1,000 percent, Furlan said.

Brazil's home-grown automatic teller machine technology is marketed successfully in Europe and China, he said. In the automotive industry, domestic engineers have perfected technology that blends ethanol and regular gasoline in fuel-efficient and environmentally-friendly "flex-cars,'' which are hugely popular in Brazil.

Government planners project that Brazil will export $2 billion a year in information technology services by the year 2007, Furlan said. That would make it a player in the off shoring industry.

"We don't want to follow the Indian model, because we don't have the same concentrated software-center infrastructure,'' he said. "We see ourselves as a backup,'' he added, to "places like India that have risks of political instability.''

The advantage for Brazil -- the world's 12th largest economy -- is its robust democracy and free press, Furlan said. The trade minister conceded, however, that Brazil has a host of problems to overcome on the economic front.

The country's average 34 percent tax rate is a hurdle for foreign investors, as well as the combination of interest rates as high as 12 percent and inflation in the 6 percent range.

Nonetheless, Brazil is the world's second-biggest magnet for direct foreign investment, after China. Its telecommunications market is completely privatized and open to foreign capital, and the percentage of the population connected to the Internet is 14 percent and rising rapidly.

Posted by talkagan at 02:14 PM

July 19, 2004

Brazil aims to be outsourcing giant

Wednesday, May 18, 2005
By Todd Benson, The New York Times

SAO PAULO On a recent trip to California, Luiz Fernando Furlan, the Brazilian trade minister, went out of his way to plug his country as the next stop in the global rush for software services and information technology.

"The image of Brazil is soccer, coffee and samba, not sophisticated technology products," Furlan said on a stop in Silicon Valley, the center of California's technology industry. "But that's out of date."

In the past decade Brazil has come a long way in shedding its image as an exporter of commodities like coffee, sugar and iron ore. Today, the country is a fledgling industrial power with expertise in advanced technology, making products like commercial airplanes and so-called flex-fuel cars that run on ethanol and gasoline.

Hoping to follow other developing countries like India, Brazil's government is trying to turn the country into an outsourcing center. It has joined with local software companies to promote Brazil's information technology overseas. Furlan has made dozens of trips abroad to talk about the cause.

Furlan announced Tuesday that the government would suspend federal taxes on exports of computer hardware and software and telecommunications services for five years. Already, Brazil is offering special credit lines to technology companies that are focusing on foreign markets.

"The government is finally waking up to the fact that we have a software industry that can compete globally," said Djalma Petit, who is in charge of promoting exports for Softex, an association of Brazilian software companies.

Brazil is a newcomer to outsourcing. The country exported only about $400 million in software and information technology services last year, according to industry estimates. Though the government expects that to rise to $2 billion by the end of 2006, it would still be low, compared with an estimated $15 billion in Indian outsourcing last year.

Brazilian government officials and software industry executives in Sao Paulo say they are not out to take on India, but to meet the demand for affordable outsourcing closer to the United States.

"We are selling ourselves as an alternative to India, not a competitor," said Marco Stefanini, chief executive of Stefanini IT Solutions, an information technology firm based in Sao Paulo that is doing outsourcing for 15 companies in the United States, including Johnson & Johnson, Kimberly-Clark and Lucent Technologies.

"This market is expanding rapidly, so we don't need to steal customers away from India," he said. "There's plenty of business to go around for all of us."

In its annual world investment report last year, the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development said the global outsourcing industry was still in its infancy, and that the trend was approaching a tipping point "from which cascades of new offshoring will spring." As the world becomes more dependent on information technology, the report added, dozens of countries will step up to fill the void as expertise in new areas and geographic concerns come into play.

Many people in the industry have said that Brazil is in position to take a good share of that market. The country's telecommunications infrastructure is already state of the art, after receiving billions of dollars in investment since it was privatized in the late 1990s. Another advantage is that the time difference between Brazil and the United States is minimal. A rising number of American companies are taking this into account, especially when they outsource data centers and call centers.

Brazil also has a thriving domestic market for software services and there is a history of rapidly embracing new technology. The country's banking sector is among the world's most automated, having developed sophisticated fund-management software in the early 1990s to help quick calculations while dealing with hyperinflation. A few years ago, the country also switched to electronic voting machines in all elections, and tens of millions of Brazilians now file their tax returns on the Internet.

Brazil still has obstacles. Brazilian universities are churning out tens of thousands of engineering graduates a year for jobs in the information technology business, but most are not fluent in English. In addition, most Brazilian software companies are much smaller than their Indian counterparts, limiting the services they can offer clients.

Posted by talkagan at 02:50 PM

The City of Sao Paulo Integrated Patient Scheduling System

SAO PAULO On a recent trip to California, Luiz Fernando Furlan, the Brazilian trade minister, went out of his way to plug his country as the next stop in the global rush for software services and information technology.

These processes reduce waiting time, organize patient flow, and greatly improve the quality of care by optimizing resources. The Java 2 Platform, Enterprise Edition (J2EE) was extensively used to build this mission-critical application and to achieve the required level of integration. Using J2EE technologies such as Enterprise JavaBeans (EJB), Java Servlet, JavaServer Pages (JSP), Java Message Service (JMS), Java technology Transaction API (Java TTA), and Java Authentication and Authorization Service (JAAS), it was possible to create a robust and high-performance application, with a high level of reuse and flexibility. Taking advantage of the new Java technology annotations facility, a large part of the code was automatically generated, which sped the development and reduced the number of errors.

Posted by talkagan at 02:48 PM