Tendulkar is a legend: Muralitharan

Ace off-spinner Muttiah Muralitharan believes that India will start as favourites in the forthcoming three-Test series in Sri Lanka next month.

“They have to start as favourites, because they have done well in Australia. They also performed in a few series before that, like in South Africa; so they will start as favourites. I would like them to start as favourites, because we have to come back and beat them,” he told rediff.com in an exclusive interview in Mumbai.

The ‘offie’ also paid rich tributes to Sachin Tendulkar, who is approaching Brian Lara’s world record for most runs in Test cricket.

Muralitharan hailed Tendulkar as a legend and said he deserves every recod that comes his way.

“Everyone knows Sachin is a great player, a legend of cricket. But getting those 171 runs won’t be easy, because we will also try to stop him. But he is also a great player and he will, at some time, cross it. That record won’t be on his mind because he will try to play and win for India.,” said Muralitharan.

“I think he deserves to get the record. It is only 170 and it is not much in six innings, because he is averaging about 58 in Test cricket. So, hopefully, he will break Lara’s record in Sri Lanka; otherwise, he can do it against Australia [at home],” he added.

Courtesy :- Rediff

Top Indian IT companies outpace global market growth rate

Top six Indian IT companies – Satyam, Wipro, Infosys, TCS, Cognizant and HCL Technologies have outpaced market with strong growth rates.

The ‘SWITCH’ companies as these entities are being referred by Gartner accounted for 2.4 per cent of the total worldwide IT services market in 2007, which was 1.9 per cent in 2006.

Gartner’s Senior Research Analyst Arup Roy said, “With such strong growth rates that exceed the overall market, the India-based IT services providers are increasing in their competitiveness and taking market share away from the rest of the market.

“Increasingly they are competing in larger outsourcing deals, with deal values routinely exceeding $100 million and spanning multiple years.”

TCS maintains its position as the largest of the India-based IT services vendors worldwide in 2007, ranked at 28th with revenue growth of 34.8 per cent rising against 35th in 2006.

While TCS’ growth was slightly below average for this group of vendors at 38per cent in 2007, it grew more than three times the growth rate of the total market on revenue of $3.8 billion in 2006.

In 2007, the India-based group of SWITCH companies accounted for 3.6 per cent of the US IT services market, compared with 2.8 per cent in 2006 and grew its Western European revenue by 51 per cent in 2007, almost four times the total market.

In 2007 the group accounted for 1.9 per cent of the Western European IT services market, compared with 1.5 per cent in 2006.

TCS, Wipro and Infosys now occupy market share positions within the top 50 Western European services leaders.

He further said that while application development and management services remain the bulk of their revenue stream, there is a gradual diversification in other service lines, such as consulting and remote infrastructure management services, where they have experienced high growth.

The report says Western European market is the next growth area for offshore services, at the same time the report expresses concerns by saying that the next twelve months would be particularly challenging for this group of India-based providers as the gap between themselves and the traditional service providers in terms of global delivery competencies and multi-country delivery sites has narrowed.

Courtesy :- Economic Times