Dell-Perot to introduce ‘pay-as-per-use’ model

NEW DELHI: Dell-perot Systems, which bundles hardware and software solutions for offering low-cost services to hospitals and other healthcare companies, plans to replicate its American model for gaining more business in India’s $12-billion domestic market.

The company, which is already offering its pay-as-per use service to healthcare customers in the US, signed a 10-year contract with Max Healthcare earlier this year, bidding against domestic rivals TCS and Wipro, for Rs 90 crore.

At a time when the US is preparing to spend almost $46 billion on modernisation of its ageing healthcare systems, and even the Indian government has aggressive IT-enabled programmes, tech firms such as TCS, Infosys and Wipro will have to compete against Dell-Perot and IBM.

“Historically there was a software and a hardware side to an IT service. Today, companies are bundling both service capabilities into one and offering it as an integrated IT solution. It helps in reaching out to the customer faster and reduce overall IT cost,” said Mr Fickenscher.

Cloud computing for hospitals and healthcare service providers is expected to reduce their overall operational and capital expenditure by up to 30-40%. Computing through cloud, or delivery of software business applications through a given network allows customers and users to use a service without owning any hardware infrastructure or software licences.

“We have launched this model in the US and it has been quite successful. It will take some more time to get these services into India, as it requires deployment of appropriate IT systems and training people on the same,” said Mr Fickenscher.

The company is already in talks with several other hospital chains in the country to manage and control their IT infrastructure. Going forward, Dell-Perot will also look at government projects in the heathcare space aggressively.

India is among the four major growth markets for Dell-Perot, the others being China, Europe and the Middle-East. The company feels that there is a huge scope of providing cloud computing services — IT services over internet — largely to physicians in India, as they usually do not have access to data centres.

The company is expected to launch cloud computing services in India, China and the UK over the next 12-18 months and Latin America subsequently.

Experts such as Diptarup Chakraborti, principal research analyst at Gartner said Dell-Perot will be a bigger worry in the overseas markets for Indian tech firms.

“Dell acquired Perot largely to cater to the US market where it was loosing out due to lack of complete product portfolio. Since Indian IT services Infosys, Wipro and TCS focus primarily on the US and European markets, Dell will give a tough competition to them in these markets considering that Perot System is the largest service provider in the healthcare space worldwide,” he said.

Britain’s National Healthcare Services (NHS) programme is another opportunity for Dell-Perot to replicate its cloud computing model.

“BT has an ongoing contract with the government to provide IT services, specifically to around 37 trusts/hospitals. We are a subcontractor to BT in that project. However, the model on which the IT solution will be based is yet to be finalised. BT is having conversation on the same with the government and will finalise it soon.”

Capgemini, Logica, AT&T, BT now eye local IT services

BANGALORE: The domestic information technology (IT) services market is no more a lowprofit option and entry of global players in this segment is a testimony to its growing maturity and lucrativeness.

Earlier, the domestic IT market was characterised as ‘where you would pay for the hardware but get the services for free’. This has changed over the last few years with the profit margins in some segments comparable to the developed markets.

Says Seepij Gupta, analyst, software and services research, IDC India: “In some segments of the domestic IT services markets — application management and managed services, for example — the profit margins range between 25-30 % and 16-32 %, respectively. This kind of profitability makes the India market almost at par with the developed economies.”

Rising profits also reveal the growing maturity of the local market where corporates and governments are willing to spend a larger amount on technology. Sudip Saha, analyst, services research, Springboard Research, says the maturity curve is getting sharper in the domestic market reflected in the larger size of IT outsourcing deals as well as longer-term contracts. “Corporates are realising that having internal IT departments is expensive and it better to outsource,” he added.

European IT services majors like Capgemini, Logica, Groupe Steria and Atos Origin have already planned their local market moves. Segment-specific players like AT&T and BT too have made their foray into the telecom technology services market in India.

Anand Sankaran, chief executive, Wipro Infotech, said domestic IT services market is reasonably attractive and has steadily seen more vendors getting in: while the market was dominated by the likes of IBM, TCS, Wipro, Hewlett-Packard and HCL Infosystems, it is now seeing aggressive pitches by Infosys Technologies and Accenture.

Springboard Research says the domestic IT services market size was $5.7 billion in 2008 and is expected to touch $6.6 billion this calendar. According to Mr Saha, there are sectors in India like utilities and infrastructure which are actively looking at outsourcing their IT requirements and in the process expanding the market.

The domestic IT services market has already set certain global benchmarks which are either being very closely studied or even getting emulated. A classic example of this is the Bharti-IBM IT Outsourcing deal, which set a benchmark for the global telecom industry.