Saturday, July 18, 2009

Invensys to go outside for product development One day last week I noticed an increased number of hits to my blog and realized it was from a link from Jim Pinto's newsletter regarding Invensys. One of my colleagues and I had separate interviews with new Invensys Operations Management CEO Sudipta Bhattacharya about the newly formed division and the direction he was going to take to get things back on track. We both thought that given the hand he was dealt from his predecessor he has a chance to succeed. Jim doesn't agree--but much of his opinion comes from a few people who post negative stuff on his "weblog." Sometimes I wonder what the definition of the new company is, though, when I saw this press release about IOM farming out its product development business to an IT contract development house. There's a media conference call on Wednesday to discuss this release, so I'll have follow up that afternoon. IOM has signed an agreement with Cognizant, an India-based consulting and technology and business outsourcing company, "to help improve the design, development and delivery of Invensys Operations Management's products and solutions for customers around the globe." The five-year deal is said to "enhance development capabilities, drive innovation and enable growth." If you read through the release, you'll see it implied that Invensys is closing its Indian development company and those people will be offered jobs with the Cognizant. "This relationship is another important step in executing our long-term growth strategy, part of an initiative we undertook several months ago that will help us become a high-performing, integrated technology company," said Sudipta Bhattacharya, chief executive officer and president, Invensys Operations Management. "Leveraging a reputable and proven partner like Cognizant accelerates our ability to expand capacity and move into adjacent markets." Under the terms of the initial five-year agreement, Cognizant will serve as Invensys Operations Management's global development partner. Cognizant intends to recruit and make an offer of employment to 400 Invensys Operations Management employees as part of their strategic offering to supply an array of development and maintenance services, including the development of manufacturing engineering, enterprise manufacturing intelligence, advanced applications, operations management, measurement and instrumentation, safety and critical control, supervisory control and data acquisition, and distributed control systems. "Externally, our customers and ecosystem partners should see no difference in our products or their working relationship with us," Bhattacharya said. "In fact, by leveraging our combined expertise and capabilities to deliver greater value, our customers should receive the intended benefits of this new relationship: faster time-to-market on new solutions, faster innovation, faster ramp up on resources and a deeper focus on the design and development of our strategic product portfolio. We believe that this long-term relationship will increase our capacity to develop strategic technology, create the flexibility to respond to changing business priorities and significantly increase our capability to quickly deliver new solutions while continuing to support our large customer base."   Francisco D'Souza, president and chief executive officer, Cognizant, said, "We look forward to working with Invensys Operations Management as they take a leadership position in the operations management space while maintaining their commitment to their clients and stakeholders. We have been very impressed with the Hyderabad development team at Invensys Operations Management and are excited at the potential innovation we will jointly drive into the manufacturing technology market place as they blend into Cognizant. With our global footprint and scale, we have the resources to make significant investments in infrastructure and skills development, as well as to provide attractive growth opportunities for our employees, all of which will help Invensys Operations Management accelerate delivery of their products and solutions." 11:02:06 AM    comment []

Potpurri of ideas I spent three weeks out of four on the road with limited Internet access, and it's taken me most of this week to (almost) get caught up. My inbox is down to about 80 messages needing a reply and the news is piling up. Here are a bunch of links I've been accumulating with some interesting stuff. ZenHabits had a number of items on health and fitness. I've been watching what I eat even more closely than ever over the past 6 months. I've lost 10 pounds and am running better than anytime during the past 6-10 years. Part of what I do is similar to Leo's suggestions: Why You (Almost) Never See a Fat Japanese (or, How I Lost 5 lbs. in Tokyo) The Healthy and Fit Algorithm He also offers a suggestion for how to live: How Giving Changes Everything Along with the giving thoughts, there still exist people who believe in giving back to the community or to society. I know that the predominant philosophy in the US (and actually much of the world) is all about what's in it for me, I've always believed that it's important that we contribute to the common good. Here's a podcast with Dr. Moira Gunn about some scientists and engineers doing just that: Managing Malaria And another podcast she does about a Web site that you may find interesting: GoodGuide.com Finally, I keep searching for ideas to make conferences more interesting. Dave Winer believes that often the people in the audience are more interesting than the speakers. So, here's a Neat Conference Hack. 10:25:10 AM    comment []