redIT Opens Data Center in Mexico City
May 8th, 2013By Narayan Ammachchi
redIT has launched a data center in Tultitlán area of Mexico City, as the IT infrastructure service provider looks to tap into a growing demand for IT services in the Latin American country.
The 95,000-square-foot data center is designed to house eight PODs and will serve mainly government institutions.
redIT said the new facility aims to meet existing demand for data center services in Mexico City.
The data center is located close to a substation of the Federal Electricity Commission.
“Our presence in Phoenix resides at the largest Tier III facility in Arizona. And our expanding core of data centers in Mexico is second to none,” says the company in its website.
With eight data centers located in the Southwestern U.S. and Latin America, redIT is one of very few companies with dedicated international connectivity and modern, modular data center technology. Last year, the company’s client base grew by 16 …
Kanban Case Study: Taking ‘Lean’ to the Furthest Limits on Globally Distributed Teams
August 27th, 2012
By Jon Tonti
A recent post on the practice of “Kanban” stirred up significant interest at Nearshore Americas – so we decided to revisit the issue and look specifically at how it works for globally distributed teams. In the previous article, we touched on Kanban’s framework, in this analysis, we look at Kanban usage by a product development team at Experian (the global information and credit processing firm) and how it leads to organic cross-functional team development.
Bancolombia: The Vital Role of Outsourcing at One of Latin America’s Most Influential Banks
August 6th, 2012
Pulgarin of Bancolombia: Outsourcers deliver “huge benefits”
By Jon Tonti
Massive systems integrations – brought about by mergers and acquisitions – have been occurring at unprecedented rates in global financial markets over the last several years. Senior executives at Bancolombia, one of Latin America’s fastest growing banks, know all about the triumphs and challenges of such integrations, and are among the first to point out that third-party outsourcers play a complex, multi-layered role in such transformations. We sat down with Bancolombia’s Jorge Otálvaro, Administrative Vice President, and Alejandro Pulgarin, Manager of Corporate Strategy and IT Architecture, to gain insight
Kanban: A Tool for Distributed Teams Tries to Overcome Endemic Outsourcing Disconnects
July 30th, 2012
By Jon Tonti
The obvious goal of any outsourced operation is that the provider is a seamless extension of the company they serve. That ideal is easy to expound but difficult to achieve; if you are not familiar with Kanban, and its capacity to positively impact how knowledge work is carried out, you may be leaving a lot on the table.
By Jon Tonti
There are 148 million youth in Latin America and the Caribbean between the ages of 15-29; 32 million of that population is not working and not in school. Youth unemployment is three times higher than adult unemployment, the youth population lacks jobs skills, and an estimated two percentage points of annual economic growth are lost region-wide due to the behavior of at risk youth according to joint research by the IDB’s Multilateral Investment Fund and the International Youth Foundation.
Is it a Case of Quantity over Quality in Guatemala?
June 19th, 2012
By Patrick Haller
Although Guatemala offers strong infrastructure, favorable pricing, and proximity to the United States, the country still has a way to go when it comes to English language call center and BPO services. Luis David, Director of Invest Guatemala, talked to us about the strides this Central American nation has made, and what lies ahead for a country that actually has developed a pretty solid BPO resume.
Hailing from 25 nations, this fourth generation is the first group of startups selected on 2012
After receiving over 656 applications from 53 different countries during the fourth application period that ended on April 3rd, Start-Up Chile announces that 100 startup companies have been selected to be part of the world-recognized acceleration program’s fourth generation.
With arrival dates in either June or July of 2012, the 100 chosen startups (216 entrepreneurs) call more than 25 different countries home and represent a myriad of industries in addition to many of the world’s most prestigious educational institutions including Harvard, Duke, Berkeley, and Stanford Universities, as well as the MIT and the London School of Economics.
The most frequently represented countries are: USA, Chile, Argentina, the United Kingdom, India, Spain, Canada and Uruguay. We are also happy to have entrepreneurs coming from countries as diverse as China, Malaysia, Sri Lanka and Venezuela.
E-commerce is the …
By Patrick Haller
There is no denying that Mexico has made great strides over the last five years, and has become a player in the global IT market. One of the engines for this growth is the public/private initiative MexicoIT. Alfredo Pacheco, CEO of MexicoIT, previously COO at CANIETI, the private sector organism that represents the interests of the Mexican High Tech Industry, spoke with us about the measures that his organization has taken, in partnership with the Mexican government, to tackle head-on the extreme obstacles that the Mexican IT industry was facing, and what they are doing to solidify the country’s competitive position.
Making the Same Mistake Over and Over? How to Absorb Outsourcing Lessons into Process
May 21st, 2012
By Jagdish Dalal
George Santayana once wrote: “Those that fail to learn from history, are doomed to repeat it.” I also like what Albert Einstein wrote, “Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.”
So it is for many providers who do not have a structured process for learning from their past performance. Customers expect their providers to continuously improve their performance. In a competitive world of outsourcing, providers benefit by reducing service defects, thereby improving customer satisfaction and their bottom line. After all, failure to meet performance levels ends up costing them in their margin – directly or indirectly.
By Leonardo Mattiazzi
Agile has been largely regarded as an ideal fit for today’s business challenges (for a reference, check the Forrester Research Feb. 2012 report, “Determine The Business And IT Impact Of Agile Development”).
And, from our experience, the business benefit of using Agile is magnified when it is coupled with the application of Lean principles, such as establishing a continuous flow of constant throughput. This principle, known as heijunka in the Lean vernacular, when applied to software development means creating a continuous delivery model, with a fixed-size team that undertakes several different projects one after another (of course, using Agile methods in each one of them). By doing so, we are able to eliminate several different sources of waste, and significantly decrease the actual cost of these projects (in our estimates, by at least 25% in the long run), as well …
