Achievo to assist applications migration and solutions development for BIFS in Middle East

Achievo offers its clients local account management and project delivery capabilities through its regional offices in Japan, North America, Europe and Greater China that are integrated with and supported by its offshore delivery centers in China and its headquarters in the United States.

Nestor G. Cruz, general manager of Achievo's North America Business Group, said:

"Achievo has a strong track record around technologies that support the automation of financial processes, including successful projects for some of Canada's leading financial services organizations."

"Achievo has implemented technologies to support corporate credit card systems and payment settlements, among other IT needs. Additionally, many financial institutions are currently faced with the need to modernize legacy mainframe systems to newer web-based platforms and Achievo has specific expertise in helping to ease this migration. Achievo also has a strong IT service management practice focused on automating ITIL (Information Technology Infrastructure Library) best practices with a specialized focus on migrating clients to newer applications such as HP Service Manager," Cruz added.

Achievo has teamed with InnoVest Group, LC, a Virginia-based management consulting and professional services firm with extensive Middle East market reach and project experience, to provide IT outsourcing and application deployment assistance to the BIFS sector. InnoVest is identifying opportunities and forming strategic partnerships with market leaders to make Achievo's proven solutions available to the end-user community.

David Dastvar, managing partner of InnoVest Group, said:

"IDC's End-User Perspectives on the Middle East Managed Services Market Report, published April 2008, is based on 298 one-on-one interviews with end-users. According to this report, more than 40 percent of surveyed end-users plan to outsource application assistance in support of data center modernization."

"IDC has further identified a high-end skills shortage in the application software field and a general reluctance by Middle East businesses to invest outright in the internal IT infrastructure and organization. This is driving the demand to outsource data center migration projects throughout the region. Achievo offers expertise in a wide variety of technologies to help clients deliver on technical solutions that address business problems. Achievo's skilled technical resources possess specialized knowledge in market-leading technologies such as J2EE, Open Source Frameworks, Oracle, IBM Web Sphere, DB2 and Tivoli, Microsoft .NET, SQL and Sharepoint, and HP Peregrin, Openview and Mercury," added Dastvar.

"Further, we believe Achievo's global business model, with its China back end, local front end, is particularly well suited to the needs of the banking and financial sector in the Middle East. Achievo has the scale, responsiveness and experience to support dynamic, high growth, high transaction-complex environments. Achievo's business model and strong track record ensures that BIFS clients will have cutting edge technology and program management cost effectiveness," said Dastvar. "Initially, we are making our solutions available to BIFS in Saudi Arabia, UAE, Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar, Egypt, and Jordan. Later we will expand into other vertical markets and countries in the region, including the transportation, communication, oil & gas, petrochemical, and manufacturing sectors."