OREANDA-NEWS. October 06, 2010. Outsource Magazine published an interview with Dr. Valentin Kazan, Vice President of IBA Group. Held at the 2010 Gartner Outsourcing & IT Services Summit in London, the interview focuses on cloud computing, the recent opening of the IBA Group’s office in Kazakhstan, and the company’s objectives, reported the press-centre of IBA.  

Outsource:  What do you see as being the major drivers for the development of outsourcing over the next few years?
Valentin Kazan:  At this event, much of the discussion has been around new approaches to global services, in particular cloud computing. This is the main direction of thinking for most companies: is it an advantage? Is it a disadvantage? Is it a challenge? What should they do with the cloud? And this is one of the main developments we’ll see.

O: How is IBA Group positioning itself to provide a coherent, robust cloud proposition to its clients?
VK: We still provide some classical services to our customers, but we’re doing a great deal to develop mobile solutions, which can be based in the cloud.

O: And what kind of clients are most keen to take up the cloud proposition?

VK: I can’t tell you specifically which clients are taking this up, but we have a lot of banks who are very interested in our services in this area…

O: Very well. You’ve just opened a new centre in Kazakhstan. Is this indicative of a greater strategic interest in the Central Asian region?
VK: Yes, for sure, this is one of the directions of our activity to open new offices in new locations to expand our business – but in general we are doing it based on business requirements: if we have a customer who needs us to deliver services in their country, we will go to them to provide better services. We recently had a huge order to deliver services in Kazakhstan, and that is why we have set up there.

O: Where is most of your work delivered to?
VK: Traditionally we have customers in Germany, the US and in fact all of Europe. We are looking to expand our services, for instance we have a very important customer in South Africa. We’re in negotiations in Arabia.

O: And what’s your objective here at the Gartner event – to attract UK business?
VK: We are looking to attract UK and European business. We don’t at the moment have great penetration into the UK – just several small, but long-term, projects – but we are looking to get a feeling for the market here at the Gartner event. We are listening.

O: Finally, what kind of sectors are you seeing most growth in?
VK: Particularly within this country we are seeing a lot of growth in banking.