See a series of video clips (in Russian and German) of the opening event and the press conference.

Valentin Kazan, IBA Vice president, introduces Hanns to journalists at the press conference.
See video

Natalia Sharangovich, museum director, says that Hanns’ works are a reflection of Belarusian reality and introduces Sergei Levteev, IBA president, who recalls the changes that have happened at IBA since Hanns first came to Belarus.

See video

Hanns Baum describes his works and creative process.

See video

Zinaida Britch, a veteran of IBA, speaks about the influence that Hanns’ creative work had on IBA employees.

See video

See more pictures of the event and Hanns’ works at IBA Gruop’s page on Facebook

Back when the global economic crisis started, many industry commentators declared that this would be a boost for the international IT outsourcing market. With companies in Europe and the US struggling to ride out the downturn, there would be strong growth in offshore outsourcing.

But things never really played out like that. Outsourcing usually needs a big upfront investment in training, knowledge transfer, and additional management to make the transition run smoothly. Many companies just decided to avoid that short-term investment even if it was clear that there would be benefits in the long-term.

We are not out of the woods yet, but there is more stability. The US is growing slowly now and many countries in Europe are seeing promising growth – though the uncertainty of the Euro is still causing many to fear for the immediate future of the Mediterranean economy.

Research and consulting company, Everest Group, in a recently published research suggested that outsourcing in Europe was worth €180-200bn in 2010. Their latest research for 2011 is not published yet, but estimates suggest that this figure will have increased to about €220bn. This is about a 10 per cent increase in demand even in quite an uncertain economic climate.

Industry observers suggest that much of this new demand is because companies in France and Germany are starting to explore a more global delivery model. In the past they were far more resistant to offshoring, but today it has become a strategic necessity, regardless of the global economic situation it is just how technology is delivered today.

All this is good news for those of us who have been delivering remotely all along, right through the economic crisis. Whether companies are exploring offshore outsourcing because they need to reduce their cost, or they just need to find more expertise and faster, we know exactly how to help.

The IBM Tivoli Management Framework (known as the TMF) is a systems management platform from IBM. It was originally a separate company and product, but IBM purchased Tivoli in the nineties and the product has been developed extensively since then within IBM’s software division.

The TMF is designed using a CORBA-based architecture and its real strength is that it can be used to manage a large number of remote devices in a very robust way.

Tivoli is an entire framework of tools that can be linked, rather than just a single software product, so it is very powerful and can be used in many ways. There are endless different ways in which the tools can be integrated to deliver a solution.

At IBA, we recently delivered a solution to a client that involved us connecting these tools together to create a fully integrated system:

• Tivoli Network Manager; the tool to help visualize and manage a complete network.
• Tivoli Netcool/OMNIbus; the tool that provides a complete operations management infrastructure, including the ability to identify and correct critical network issues.
• Tivoli Netcool Impact; an intelligence tool that adds context to events, helping you to manage events on the network and using intelligence to determine whether an event is critical or not.

Even this short example alone gives you an idea of the power of Tivoli. It is not just about visualizing your network with a series of graphical representations, but about adding a layer of intelligence into the network itself – almost like a self-healing network so your team only needs to manage the critical issues.

To those not involved in managing networks all this might seem quite dull, but every company needs their network to be up and running and as reliable as possible, business doesn’t happen without it, so the team keeping the network running are really ‘keeping the lights on’ at your business. Do they have the right tools for the job?

IBA Group entered the contest for the fourth time and won for the second year in a row. In 2011, the award was in the Relationship Management category.

We were pleased to be in the same company with world IT leaders. The recepients of awards in other categories were Oracle, Fujitsu, and other reputable companies.

See a video clip of the award presentation at http://youtu.be/gUrbwI5IcRQ
See winner list

Mobile devices are exploding in popularity – tablets and smartphones are now outselling the regular PC. But the consumer, not the enterprise, has led this revolution in how we consume computing systems.

The growth in popularity of the app store concept – initially dominated by Apple, but now with Android also being important – has changed our expectation of what it means to use a computer. The system must be easy to use, to configure, and to maintain. Remember when installing applications was something that had to be planned? Now you can just do it to try something out and then delete it if it is not useful.

The phones and devices running these tools feature a number of sensors and gyroscopes – they know exactly which way up they are and where in the world they are being used. This has opened the world of computing far beyond what anyone could have imagined – even just five years ago. Imagine trying to describe the Google skymap application to someone five years ago – they would never have believed that a mobile phone could be capable of complexities like augmented reality – that kind of technology was only for the military.
But how is all this changing life inside the company? There are two major problems for the CIO or technology leader:

• People have better technology in their pocket than the PCs supplied by the company. Why would they want to use an old desktop PC running Windows when their phone or tablet has better applications and is easier to use?

• If people have better technology of their own, and would prefer to use it in the workplace, then how can all these mobile tablets, phones, and applications be managed within the regular enterprise network?

Not only is there a problem of work culture developing in many companies, but also there is a security risk. Staff insisting on using their own technology need the support of a CIO who puts realistic governance plans in place to secure the company network, without preventing them from using the tools they prefer.

The company that gets this right will not only have happier staff, but also more productive and efficient – and why not give the staff a cash bonus for using their own technology too?

When a company like Intel reorganises itself around mobile technologies, it is clear that something has changed (See Intel Reorganizes Mobile Business to Speed and Improve Development).

And this is no surprise. Take a look around at how IT is being consumed today and it is clear that there has been a mobile revolution. According to the latest Gartner forecast, worldwide tablet sales will reach 63.6 million units in 2011– a 261.4% increase from its 17.6 million sales in 2010. Tablet sales are expected to reach 326.3 million units by the end of 2015.

http://www.androidauthority.com/tablets-potential-corporate-use-sales-326-million-2016-33928/

So the world is organising access to computing power through tablets and smart phones much more than ever before – not through desktop PCs or even laptops.

The smartphone and tablet revolution may have started with consumers, but it is moving into the corporation. Many businesses are actively exploring how to increase productivity through the use of tablets – and they are about to become more popular than the regular PC.

Gartner estimates that the combined sales of smartphones and tablets will be 44% greater than PC sales this year, and by the end of 2014, the installed base of computing devices running mobile operating systems will surpass the total installed base of all PC systems.

That’s just two years away – more mobile devices than traditional PCs installed around the world. With such a change in hardware there is also a need for new software too and experts who really understand how to write code for tablets.

Porting old code can work, but doesn’t exploit the power of the tablet. The real winners will be the companies that realise not only what the hardware can do, but how to write new forms of code that take advantage of this new mobile business paradigm.

In my last blog here, I outlined how a need to spread risk has led to a marked increase in companies exploring the CEE region for their IT and software development needs. But the growth in outsourced services available from the CEE region is not restricted to IT alone.

The region has highly educated people working within the service sector meaning that there are many BPO opportunities in the region. Many organisations – such as international giants like DHL – have setup very large operations serving the whole of Europe from a CEE base in a variety of different business processes.

But now there are even international lawyers exploring the region for Legal Process Outsourcing (LPO). This story in The Lawyer magazine about US law firm White & Case exploring the relative merits of Poland, Hungary, or the Czech Republic is just such an example.

White & Case already have resource in the Philippines, but are worried about their entire back office being located offshore in a single location – just like many of the IT firms that have explored a risk diversification strategy.

Every executive responsible for outsourcing needs to consider both natural disasters and political risk when locating a function offshore. Though many companies explore outsourcing as a means of reducing cost, if the offshore function fails entirely then it won’t be cost savings that are under discussion, it may be how to save your company.

It is clear that the IT sector in CEE has expanded allowing entrepreneurs to start offering many IT-enabled BPO services. All these new services help the local CEE economy to develop as well as offering a great place for companies to locate new services and to reduce their own risk.

When the global financial crisis struck the world in 2008, many predicted that there would be a boom in offshore outsourcing. It didn’t really happen.

Why? Because at that time most companies slashed all project budgets and retrenched employees. It was a time when nobody was certain of what the future would bring and it costs money to run outsourcing projects – even if they can create longer-term savings. Nobody wanted to invest all that money in setting up in a remote location hoping for gains in the future.

We are once again in an uncertain time, but this time there is a far more mature option for sourcing in the central and eastern European (CEE) region. The setup costs for running a project in the CEE region are far lower than for a full-blown offshoring programme where work needs to be transferred to India or China.

So there is a much more credible alternative available if companies in western Europe are seeking to stabilise costs in the short-term and build a pan-European delivery model for the long-term.

The CEE region has never tried to compete head on with countries like India in terms of absolute labour cost, the advantage has always been the cultural compatibility with Europe, the expertise, and the ability to be close to the customer – it’s possible to make a day trip to a development team from any other place in Europe.

And now, with the economy looking uncertain once again in both the US and Europe it seems that the nearshoring option is looking far more attractive than the full offshore model, because much less initial investment is needed to make it happen.

We have been talking about the advantages of CEE for a long time on this blog, but it is interesting to see that the issues in the wider European economy are making it even more attractive to work with the region. Have you taken another look at how nearshoring compares recently?

IT is changing fast and it can be hard to keep up, but companies in the IT services business know that one thing is certain, the role of the Chief Information Officer (CIO) is changing fast.

The Chief Financial Officer (CFO) is becoming more involved in technology decisions in many companies as IT moves itself more closely to the business across all industry sectors.

It’s no surprise. Think for a moment about the big difference between Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) and IT Outsourcing. With BPO, the person commissioning the work is a business leader, the head of finance, the head of HR, the head of operations… they don’t really care about the underlying technology. They just want to buy a solution that works for their business.

Now think about IT services. IT suppliers have worked with the CIO for many years – selling solutions to the technology head. Yet the role of the CIO seems to have changed during the economic slowdown. Companies require their CIO, CFO, and business leaders to work more closely than ever in ensuring that the business benefits from the decision made by all the executives.

Take a look at what IT expert Angelica Mari says in her book ‘Reboot: Leading IT in the information age’: “The CIO is quickly losing their traditional power base focused on the ownership of physical assets. The basement stuffed full of ‘kit’ is no more. In this environment, only the fittest – or smartest – will survive.”

But why has this change taken place? The past couple of years have been tough for everyone. The role of the CIO has evolved and changed because IT has become more important than ever – in all industries.

In travel, it’s probably CRM that is the most important investment right now. In government it is technology that can reduce transaction costs… In most industries, IT has become so pervasive that the companies could not operate without it. So, with IT becoming more strategic than ever, how come many industry analysts believe that the age of the CIO as technology leader is over?

Mark Kobayashi-Hillary

In the past three years or so, since the initial credit crunch and then global economic slowdown, outsourcing as a business strategy has taken a knock.

It’s not that there is anything wrong with it as a strategy. It’s just that outsourcing usually involves change, some change in processes and the way things are done. That needs planning and transition, so even if the future state saves money, many firms have declined to go through the process of getting there while survival has been the priority.

If you look back to the time around 2008/2009, most firms were probably focused on budget revisions, retrenching people they cannot justify keeping, and targeting business activities to those that create the most immediate return – completely focusing on getting through the recession.

But talk to most firms today and there is a more interesting and positive picture emerging. There remains the fear of a double-dip recession in countries such as the UK, and Germany is starting to struggle under the weight of supporting the Eurozone, but the major economies of Europe have been growing again – albeit slower than we used to enjoy. There is certainly a growth in business optimism and a greater desire to spend on improving company operations.

Firms are exploring how best to ride the growth when it comes, and that does involve a large amount of planning how to work with partners. The focus is now on positioning a trusted group of partners together and aiming for growth over this decade.

The biggest change in behaviour will be the desire to leverage existing assets over the next couple of years. When firms have already sunk cash into developing expertise and systems in-house, they won’t just discard that knowledge overnight.

It’s been a tough time over the past couple of years, but the new decade looks like an exciting place to be and outsourcing within Europe is going to be an important business strategy that helps us all return to growth.