ExlService' expansion plans
 
ExlService Holdings intends to invest $8 million to set up a new center in Hyderabad. The company currently has offices located in Gurgaon, Pune and Noida. The Hyderabad facility, scheduled to be operational from mid-2008, will be a 1000-seater facility. Meanwhile the company is also planning to expand outside India and is eyeing Philippines, Romania and Croatia to set up centers. The company reported $121 million in revenues for the year 2006 and is targeting $160-$170 million for 2007.  
    
Infosys to acquire Philips Global's F&A BPO
 
Infosys plans to acquire Philips Global's F&A BPO. Philips has its captive centers in Chennai, Warsaw and Bangkok, with a total headcount of 1,500 employees. Infosys had earlier acquired Expert Information Services for around $22.9 million in 2003. This will be the company's second acquisition.  
    
Bhilwara Scribe strengthens its presence in the healthcare segment
 
Bhilwara Scribe, a medical transcription BPO has acquired two healthcare BPOs - Benson Transcription Technologies Inc in the U.S. and Global Meditrans Private Ltd in Bangalore, India. With this acquisition, Bhilwara Scribe will strengthen its presence in the medical transcription business. The combined unit will have a headcount of 600 people.  
    
Nasscom releases a list of top 15 BPO-ITES firms

Nasscom has released a list of top 15 third party ITES-BPO companies. Genpact has taken the top spot and is followed by WNS Global Services and Transworks Information Services. The ranks are based on the revenues for the fiscal 2006-2007, as per Nasscom's annual survey on IT industry performance.  
    
AstraZeneca awards outsourcing deal to IBM for $1.4 billion 

IBM won a seven year deal from AstraZeneca for $1.4 billion. Under the agreement, IBM will provide desktop management, server and storage hosting, help desk support and network maintenance and management services to AstraZeneca.  
    
Williams-Sonoma cancels deal 

After three years into the deal, Williams-Sonoma Inc. is canceling their 5-year, multi-million dollar technology outsourcing contract with IBM. The company plans to bring the operations in-house. However, Williams-Sonoma did not disclose the reasons for withdrawing the contract.  
    
IBM's India business on the rise 

IBM is in talks with the Indian unit of Vodafone for a multi-million dollar domestic outsourcing deal in the telecom sector. In March 2007, IBM signed a 10-year, $800 million deal with Idea Cellular for managing Idea Cellulars' IT infrastructure and billing services. IBM had also signed a $750 million, 10-year deal with Bharti Airtel in 2004.