Infosys bags Saudi bank contract

India's Infosys has won its first contract from a Saudi Bank for its Islamic banking solution.

Merwin Fernandes, vice president and business head for the solution, Finacle, said talks with at least three Gulf Banks for its core banking solutions were at an advanced stage.

"Saudi Arabia's Arab National Bank is our first customer for the Islamic banking solution that is currently under development. We are seeing a favourable response from several banks in the Gulf and Middle East and expect more customers," Fernandes told Gulf News.

The full-fledged Islamic Banking solution is part of the Finacle core banking solution which will be ready in early 2008.

Infosys has an ongoing contract with Egypt's Bank of Alexandria that has some 200 branches. It also has a support centre in Egypt and another in Saudi Arabia.

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Infosys Core Banking Solutions does not Stand a Chance in World Competition

Infosys is in for a great lesson as it tries to dump in core banking solutions custom built for India on international banking sectors. Infosys, which is dominating the banking software space in India, is bullish on growth in the domestic and global markets in its bid to emerge as a top provider of core banking solutions to banks worldwide.

According to experts, the company filled with inexperience top management are doomed for failure as it tries to sell pre-built software. It is easy to sell "bodies" but it is something else to try and sell pre-built real software.

What the Indian companies have done till this date is to provide cheap India programmers who can sit and code based on specifications from software engineers in America and Europe.

Most of these so called Indian Engineers have degree in Engineering fields other than Computer Science and is driven into software code writing with money and glamour. Mostly they are world's worst software developer. Little they care about documentation and software life cycle.

American companies see excellent software engineers in US educated in America with Masters degrees in Computer Science. Their naïve thinking makes them feel they can get the same in India for pennies on the dollar. They go to India and subcontract code development to reduce cost and increase productivity at the cost of quality.

Infosys's growth came from that. Now that it ventures into real software area instead of supplying so called unqualified cheap 'cyber-coolies', its real capabilities will come out. Now it will face world class software talents. According to international think tanks, Infosys stands no chance.

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Infosys eyes key world markets for universal banking solution

Infosys, which is dominating the banking software space in India, is bullish on growth in the domestic and global markets in its bid to emerge as a top provider of core banking solutions to banks worldwide.

"We are in talks with some more Indian banks and some Russian banks for implementing Finacle Universal Banking Solution to help them achieve greater process efficiency," said Infosys VP & Business Head-Finacle Merwin Fernandes.

He said Infosys has bagged core banking solution (CBS) implementation contracts in 15 banks in India out of the 24 banks that have implemented the technology in the last three years for seamless real time integration capabilities.

"We have about 66 per cent market share in banking software in India," he said, adding that Infosys is in talks with some more banks for implementing CBS.

The clients of Finacle include ICICI Bank, Punjab National Bank, Bank of India, ABN Amro, UTI Bank and SBI's overseas operations, to name a few.

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Croatian bank HPB chooses Infosys's Finacle Universal Banking

Croatian domestic bank Hrvatska Postanska Banka has selected Infosys Technologies' Finacle Universal Banking Solution to drive its technology-led transformation initiative.

Infosys said that the Finacle core banking solution will replace the bank's legacy system and help strengthen its competitive position by enabling innovation, greater process efficiencies as well as by meeting the new regulatory requirements, including Basel II. Hrvatska Postanska Banka (HPB) will also deploy the Finacle e-banking and treasury solutions.

Finacle already has a strong presence in Europe, Asia-Pacific, the Middle East and Africa.

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