BPO will be big draw at IT.Com

BANGALORE: Bangalore's annual IT fair is expected to reflect, at least in part, the racy action being played out in the BPO sector. The BPO pavilion, we believe, will attract the maximum number of visitors this year.Last month, movers Gartner and Nasscom were locked in a minor skirmish. Nothing earthshaking but significant, surely. Even as Nasscom reaffirmed its optimistic projections of the segment exceeding $20 billion by 2008, Gartner struck a note of caution.Sujay Chohan, country director, of the research firm noted that there was a "lot of hype in this sector" and very little had been written about its actual offshore potential which is only 5 per cent of the current market size."If we are not careful in terms of expectations, very soon we could be witnessing another dotcommish scenario where investments do not match returns," he said, shocking the industry.This observation notwitstanding, excitement in this segment is gradually rising. Bangalore, armed with a newly formulated BPO policy, with about 49 companies in this genre, has been among the frontrunners: No puffery, this.Accenture, the world's leading management and technology services organisation and Sykes, a world leader in customer care outsourcing, are two high-profile companies which have decided to come to Bangalore. Ernst & Young is expected to enlarge its 300-plus capacity soon and the recent acquisition of Pricewaterhouse Coopers by IBM Global Services, which already has a major presence here, may see increased business coming to the city.Global corporations like GE, HSBC, Hewlett-Packard and Dell are all expanding their capacities in the city.Homegrown tacklers, Wipro and Infosys are in the game too. While Wipro took the acquisition route and felled Spectramind, Infosys conjured up Progeon. These guys have it all: people, infrastructure, process and technology.Meanwhile, nifty, pure-play BPO companies with their disarming chutzpah are queering the pitch further.A buoyant 24X7 sees no boundaries. Customer Asset like tangy peppermint is swallowed by ICICI. iSeva, IT-accounts, Immaculate, Crossdomain, i-backoffice are relatively small BPO outfits but are growing at a frenetic pace.Watch out for some major announcements in IT.Com 2002.BPO is the flavour of the season. Savour it, until it lasts.