Politec is Brazil’s largest privately owned IT services provider with full-year 2005 sales of BRR 478m ($226m) and some 6,000 employees. The company provides a broad range of applications and infrastructure services, and has operations in China, Japan, Europe, and the US.
Under the terms of the deal with CDI, Politec will provide a range of applications services from its management center in Sao Paulo. A growing number of international IT services firms are tapping into Brazil’s potential. EDS Corp employs more than 5,800 people in the country and uses it as a location for providing applications, infrastructure, and call-center services to international clients.
IBM Global Services supports all of its Latin American outsourcing clients from its data center in Sao Paulo, and Indian giant Tata Consultancy Services Ltd expects to recruit between 600 to 800 new employees in Brazil to support its contract with ABN AMRO. The vendor said that around 50% of the ABN AMRO work is being delivered from Brazil. TCS currently has 600 staff in the country working on projects for clients including Gillette, AIG, and Brasil Telecom, and plans to increase this to 2,000 people by March 2007.
Brazil’s indigenous IT services vendors are also keen to expand their offshore delivery capabilities. Politec recently signed a memorandum of understanding to collaborate with Chinese vendor Neusoft, and is planning a stock market flotation in order to fund the expansion of its offshore business.
The country’s largest IT services supplier, CPM, made around $20m of its $300m annual sales from clients based outside Brazil including Ford and General Electric. The company is backed by Deutsche Bank Capital Partners, and has some 2,800 employees providing applications and systems integration services to clients from seven development centers.
Consulting and applications services firm Stafanini has more than 4,000 employees and full-year 2005 revenue of BRR 250m ($118m). Last December, the company became the first Brazilian firm to gain SEI CMM level five certification for the quality of its software engineering work. Stefanini’s clients including Whirlpool, Johnson & Johnson and Clorox, and it set up its first US operation in 2001 in Fort Lauderdale, and also has sales offices in Portugal, Spain, and Italy.
Brazil IT, an industry association attempting to promote the country in the same way that Nasscom has done for India, admits that while the domestic IT services market is worth around $15bn annually, exports of IT services are less than $500m, although it hopes to increase this to more than $2bn by 2007.
