Wipro sets up global services delivery from China

Indian outsourcer Wipro has set up a global services delivery center in Chengdu in southwest China, targeting customers in the U.S., Europe, and other markets outside the country. The center, set up in 2004, is focused on local customers and on Chinese operations of multinational companies, Suchira Iyer, general manager at Wipro Chengdu, said Thursday. The company already runs a services center in Shanghai with about 300 to 400 staff.

The move by Wipro to open a global services facility in Chengdu reflects a growing trend for Indian outsourcers to set up global delivery facilities outside India. "The center is part of our strategy to have development centers worldwide, and to use local talent that is available across the world," Iyer said. Setting up operations outside India also helps outsourcers offer their customers assurances about business continuity and disaster recovery, analysts said. Indian outsourcing companies have to become global with the flexibility to offer services from a large number of countries, said Siddharth Pai, a partner at outsourcing consultancy Technology Partners International (TPI) in Houston. The center at Chengdu has 100 staff with plans to increase the number to about 1,000 in a few years, Iyer said. The Chengdu center, though predominantly focused on foreign customers, will also address the local market, Iyer said. Chengdu offers skilled staff at costs similar to those in India, she added.

Chengdu has a large number of universities, and there is large pool of skilled staff that Wipro hopes to hire, she said. The Chengdu center will provide IT and business process outsourcing (BPO) services, Wipro said. The local government in Chengdu is also actively promoting outsourcing, she added. The center will have an initial focus on testing and enterprise application services for the manufacturing, banking, financial services, and insurance industries. It will provide multilingual services in English, Chinese and Japanese, Wipro added.

Mac News Briefs

Apple has released Logic Pro 9.0.2, a minor update to its professional music recording, editing, and mixing software. According to the release notes, the 9.0.2 update allows Flex Markers to align and snap to MIDI notes, makes performing a punch-in recording with Replace Mode behave correctly, adds an option for latency measurement to the I/O plug-in, and causes TDM plug-ins to behave as expected (only an issue previously for users with Pro Tools HD audio hardware.) The update is available via Software Update or from Apple's support Web site. Logic Pro 9 is part of the Logic Studio suite of music applications. Apple had yet to update its Logic Pro 9: Release Notes Web page with additional details when this story was posted.-Jonathan Seff Prosoft updates Data Rescue recovery utility Prosoft Engineering updated Data Rescue, introducing a new interface and a number of speed and performance improvements to its data-recovery utility.

Prosoft also added more than 100 new Reconstructed file types for Deleted and Deep scans. Data Rescue 3 features animated visual effects in its redesigned interface to help guide users through recovering files from corrupted hard drives or accidental deletions. The new FileIQ features lets the software learn about new file types from user-supplied samples, extending the number of potential Reconstructed file types supported by Data Rescue. Prosoft improved support for scanning Apple software RAID drives and 1TB or greater drives as well as support for recovering large sparse disk image files, pkzip files, and hard linked files. Other enhancements include the ability to suspend and resume scans and manage the results from multiple scans. Data Rescue 3 runs on OSX 10.4.11 or later, including Snow Leopard.

In addition, File Stitcher 2.1 features a pre-stitch validation check list, expanded bitrate support, and Snow Leopard compatibility. The software costs $99 for a personal use license; licenses for IT pros cost $249.-Philip Michaels File Stitcher 2.1 features redesigned merging engine File Stitcher, the MP3 merging tool from Pariahware, has been updated to version 2.1. The latest update features redesigns to both File Stitcher's interface and merging engine. Version 2.1 is a free upgrade to all File Stitcher 2.0 license holders. Available for $15, the program also offers a demo where you're limited to stitching two files together at a time.-PM

Juniper’s enterprise business hums in Q3

Juniper Networks (JNPR) can thank its enterprise business for third-quarter results that exceeded expectations. Profits came in at $122.5 million, or 23 cents per diluted share, an increase of 21% quarter-over-quarter but a decrease of 28% from the third quarter of 2008. Still, the results were better than the $800 million in revenue and 21 cents per share earnings Wall Street was expecting. For the period ended Sept. 30, Juniper recorded revenue of $823.9 million, an increase of 5% sequentially but a decrease of 13% from the same period a year ago.

And that's due to a 10% sequential growth in Juniper's enterprise business, which was "better than expected," according to Juniper CFO Robyn Denholm. Johnson added that the IBM-branded Juniper products offered under a recent OEM arrangement are now available. Juniper's answer to Cisco in the data center: Stratus Project CEO Kevin Johnson said those results for the enterprise business represent "a starting point for a level of momentum" Juniper believes it can achieve in that market. "Our vision of the data center architecture of the future is resonating," Johnson said in a conference call with analysts. Juniper's EX LAN switching line, which debuted in the first half of last year, accounted for $50 million in sales in the quarter and is on a $200 million annual run rate. The MX debuted in 2006. The SRX firewall, which was unveiled a year ago, is on a $100 million annual run rate.

The MX series Ethernet router, deployed mostly in carrier networks but also in some enterprise data centers, is on a $400 million annual run rate. Together, the EX, MX and SRX product lines accounted for $180 million of Juniper's $634 million in product revenue in the quarter. "We are executing better, and that's coming mainly from the US," Johnson said of the enterprise results in the quarter. We're share takers in the enterprise market, we've got a lot of upside. Sales were particularly strong in the US federal government marketplace. "We will continue to throttle up execution globally. As the economy improves, enterprise investments will improve, but at a slower rate than service providers. "The level of buzz with customers in the enterprise continues to grow," Johnson added. "It's indicative of our opportunity. SLT revenue was a record for the quarter at $229 million, Denholm said, an increase of $11 million from 2008's Q3. In general, Juniper sees the economy and its business improving. "Our visibility has improved in key areas of our business," Johnson said. "We're in an economic recovery.

But we've got to execute and engage with customers." Juniper experienced increased sales of its Service Layer Technology products – traditionally enterprise security and WAN acceleration gear – to service providers in Q3 as well. The pace varies across geographies" with improvements domestically, stabilization in Asia and a slower uptick in Europe. For the fourth quarter, Juniper expects revenue of $860 million to $895 million, and earnings per share in the 23 cents to 26 cents range.

Google, Facebook to offer music sales

Facebook plans to let users buy music and other virtual products on its Web site, the company said Wednesday, expanding its sources of revenue as the company seeks to turn its huge popularity into fiscal profit. The move comes as Google looks to hold its dominance against Bing, which has stolen around 9 percent of the U.S. online search market since its launch earlier this year, according to Internet monitoring companies. Separately, Google will let users sample and buy songs directly from its search results page with a service it plans to announce next week, according to reports.

Songs and official sports icons are among the new virtual gifts Facebook will add to its store, the company said on its blog. The service, powered by music streaming site Lala.com, will be available by the end of this week, a Lala representative said in an e-mail. Users in the U.S. will be able to pay US$0.10 to send friends a song that can only be listened to online, or $0.90 to send a copy that can be downloaded and transferred, the company said. Google will let users stream songs from Lala and iLike.com, which is owned by MySpace, according to a report in the The Wall Street Journal. Google already has an ad-supported music search service, offered only in China, that lets users stream and download songs for free.

A Lala link will let users stream a full song once for free and pay about $1 to download a copy, the report said. A Google executive earlier this year said the company had started work on applying the model in other countries. Lala declined to comment on any deal with Google. Google did not immediately reply to a request for comment. Google's rivalry with Bing was visible as both countries announced search deals with Twitter on Wednesday.

Google said it would launch a search service for Twitter messages just hours after Microsoft announced a similar deal for Bing.

Wall Street Beat: Red Hat, 3Com, PC sector boosts tech

Macroeconomic concerns put pressure on stocks in all sectors this week, but acquisitions and financial news continued to stoke investor hopes for an imminent recovery from the recession for IT. Though not all the news was positive, revenue numbers from Red Hat, 3Com and Palm, Dell's acquisition of services company Perot, and continued improvement in hardware sector surveys fed confidence in the tech sector. A drop in oil prices also raised concerns about economic activity and demand for energy. Stocks in major indices fell Thursday as market watchers absorbed news from the National Association of Realtors, which said home sales fell 2.7 percent in August compared with a rise of 7.2 percent in July. Meanwhile tech vendors, while feeling the effects of the recession, have been doing better than expected.

Excluding one-time items, earnings were $0.08 per share. Networking vendor 3Com Thursday morning reported that net income for the quarter ending Aug. 28 fell to US$7.5 million, or $0.02 per share, from $79.8 million a year earlier. Revenue declined 15 percent to $290.5 million. Excluding exceptional items, 3Com actually beat analyst expectations of $0.05-per-share earnings on revenue of $278.2 million, according to a Thomson Reuters poll. Though the numbers sound bad, $70 million in earnings from the prior year period came from a one-time occurrence: resolution of a patent dispute. For the current quarter, 3Com forecasts also trump analyst expectations.

Analysts were forecasting $0.06 a share on revenue of $286.9 million. 3Com was trading at $5.05, $0.26 up from the day earlier, after the announcement. The company expects earnings of $0.06 to $0.07 a share on revenue of $295 million to $305 million. On its part, Research In Motion had mixed financial news late Thursday. Excluding the charge, however, RIM would have earned $588.4 million, or $1.03 per share, on revenue of $3.53 billion, up 37 percent from a year earlier. The company reported that earnings declined by 4 percent for its second fiscal quarter as a legal charge offset sales of BlackBerry devices. Analysts had forecast earnings of $1.00 per share on revenue of $3.62 billion.

Acquisitions point to where the action is in tech, as companies jostle to ramp up on hot areas of tech. The real tech-stock success this week was Linux software and services vendor Red Hat, which Wednesday said that for the quarter ending Aug. 30, revenue was $183.6 million, an increase of 12 percent from the year-earlier period. "IT organizations continue to move ahead with purchases of high value solutions, and Red Hat is capitalizing on this demand as a result of our strong customer relationships and proven value proposition," said CEO Jim Whitehurst in the company's earnings statement. "We continue to be optimistic about Red Hat's future and believe the company is well positioned when the economic and IT spending environment improves," Bank of America-Merrill Lynch upgraded its recommendation on the company's stock and Bank of America raised its rating for the company to buy, noting the strong sales during a decline in corporate spending on IT. Red Hat shares were trading at $27.96 Thursday afternoon, up $3.08. M&A activity has also stirred excitement in tech lately. Dell Monday announced it would pay $3.9 billion to acquire IT services provider Perot Systems. HP last year bought service company EDS, and IBM has long been able to offer services to support a wide product portfolio. The move was widely seen as a way for Dell, the number-two PC company behind Hewlett-Packard, to match HP's and IBM's services offerings.

The move takes place as analysts revise estimates for PC sales upward. Its latest PC report said that current data show worldwide shipments could hit 285 million units in 2009, a 2 percent decline from 2008 shipments of 291 million, but well above its June forecast, which forecast a 6 percent unit decline in 2009. "PC demand appears to be running much stronger than we expected back in June, especially in the U.S. and China," said George Shiffler, research director at Gartner. "We think shipments are likely to be growing again in the fourth quarter of 2009 compared to the fourth quarter of 2008." Gartner said Wednesday that the worst may be over for the PC sector.