Cybernet Rejigs Business Focus

CHENNAI: The deepening economic crisis in the U.S. has forced Cybernet-SlashSupport (CSS), a technology operations management company, to quickly rejig its game plan both in terms of geographical focus and business strategy.

In an interaction with The Hindu, Shiva Ramani, CEO, said that CSS had decided to bring down its exposure to the U.S. market significantly. “We have picked up Europe as a bigger focus. Over the last 9-12 months, we have started targeting more aggressively the European market,” he said.

The company at present has 87 per cent exposure to the U.S. market. CSS was targeting to bring this down to 65 per cent next year. “We expect Europe to contribute to around 25 per cent of our revenue in the next 12-18 months. At present, 6-7 per cent of our revenue is coming from Europe.”

Mr. Ramani said he had suspended his confidence in the U.S. “I have to see more data to be more comfortable,” he added. The current scene in the U.S., he said, was forcing CSS to accelerate investment into other geographical locations such as Europe.

“The IT budget, he said, had two components to it — CapEx (capital expenditure) and OpEx (operating expenditure). “CapEx is hardware, software, and software implementation,” he said. “We are targeting our customers’ OpEx budget, which is month-on-month recurring expense. We are well positioned to target the OpEx space because of our inherent strengths in infrastructure management services and tech support,” Mr. Ramani said.

IT revolution 1.0 was all about CapEx spend (building applications). In a recession environment, OpEx was the one that needed to be supported with offshore work. “Since we are doing OpEx related work, which is fertile for migration and offshoring in a recession or lack of budgetary environment, we are seeing a lot of positive activity in the market place. In recent months, we have seen renewed activity, engaging with customers on work in the OpEx outsourcing space,” he said.

“To me, this is outsourcing 2.2 of sorts. OpEx outsourcing is the next wave in the outsourcing space, according to me,” he said. CSS positioning today revolved around providing optimising solutions relating to the operating expense. “My value proposition to customers in the OpEx play is not cost savings, but actually increasing market capitalisation with the same topline. And, our proposition seems to be a lot more exciting to a CFO,” he said.

About CSS
Cybernet-SlashSupport (CSS) is a global technology solutions provider to enterprises, consumers & technology companies. Using a proven and cost-effective global delivery model, CSS manages technology, infrastructure, platforms and applications for Fortune 2000 companies and manages four centers of excellence that create solutions for specific industry needs spanning Banking & Financial Services, Airlines, Telecom, Retail, Manufacturing and Independent Software Vendors (ISVs) to name a few.

Founded in 1996, CSS Corp is headquartered in San Jose, CA, USA with offices in UK, Poland, India and is backed by leading financial institutions including SAIF partners, Goldman Sachs and Sierra Ventures.

Contact Details:
K.T. Jagannathan
URL: http://www.csscorp.com/
Email: [email protected]
Tel: 408 615 5700

Address:
3031 Tisch Way, Suite 1002
City: San Jose
State: California
Zip Code: 95128
Country: USA