Welcome..

I am delighted once again to pen the welcome note to the NIIT Technologies UK Newsletter. I have so much to update you with since our last edition, so I shall start by telling you what NIIT has been doing to remain competitive and efficient during the current global financial challenge.

We at NIIT, like many businesses, seized the opportunity to cut costs and minimise our overheads by leaving our hunting ground in High Wycombe to take up shared residency with the Room Solutions team (our sister company) based out of Canary Wharf. We are now in a wonderful location and take advantage of the cosmopolitan lifestyle Canary Wharf offers.

Likewise, we have been helping our customers to remain competitive too; analysts and industry leaders tell us that outsourcing managed services and some IT functions has been an obvious path to take for companies to reduce costs and maximise on efficiency. Indeed, Managed Services thrives in tough economic times – it is a crucial tool for firms who plan to emerge from the current economic downturn more successful and competitive than when they entered it.

Since October, we now have our very own Blog site, which has a host of keen followers from the UK and across the globe. The use of blogging and social media tools such as twitter are becoming indispensable, and we plan to use this technology to leverage and take part in industry debates, so please do log on and take a look, I promise to review any comments you put forward here.

In this newsletter, we proudly announce new additions to our customer base, and for the second year running our number 1 ranking in this years’ Black Book of Outsourcing Survey of the Global Travel Industry.

Again, we have successfully co-hosted events where senior analyst Alan Rodger from the Butler Group shared the platform with leading brains from NIIT providing insights and knowledge into Remote Infrastructure Management (RIMS - one of most commonly adopted Managed Services), and Neil Saunders of Verdict who discussed ways of winning the e-retail battle - delivering on the needs of the shopper and latest technological developments in e-commerce. We now conduct all of our CIO forums under the world-famous Chatham House Rules, which states; “When a meeting, or part thereof, is held under the Chatham House Rule, participants are free to use the information received, but neither the identity nor the affiliation of the speaker(s), nor that of any other participant, may be revealed". In our experience, this certainly has been a useful rule, enabling participants to be much more open and seeing them share plenty of information.

So as you see, there are many areas where we have been proactive during 2009, and I look forward to updating you with our future developments again soon. In the meantime, we at NIIT would like to wish all of our readers and their families a Merry Christmas and a prosperous New Year for 2010.

Ravi Pandey
Sr. VP and Head of UK BU

NB: Remember to read the latest thoughts of our team at http://niittech.wordpress.com/ and share it with everyone and anyone you know.

*Stop Press*

• NIIT and BA recently got together for an evening of Murder and Mystery - many were accused, but who was the murderer?

  

• NIIT and SITA celebrate 2 years of partnership at a prestigious gathering in Delhi

  

I promise to reveal delicious details of these events in the next edition of our newsletter!