The Hindu Business Line -- Companies are launching efforts to ensure their employees feel good at work and home so that they give their best.

The Hindu -- Techies turn models as fashion shows become the showstopper for most company events at Technopark.

India TechOnline-- IT Enterprise leaders, led by analysts, Forrester, suggested on Monday, that the big new opportunity, in India, might be Big Data -- industry buzzword for vast amounts of mostly unstructured data that defies conventional methods for managing them.

The Hindu -- IT professionals at UST Global, a California-based IT solutions provider, took a break from their hectic routine on Thursday to participate in a two-wheeler rally organised to increase traffic awareness among the general public.

Information Week -- More and more Indian companies and developers are adopting the smart building concept, which in turn is generating a huge revenue opportunity for vendors like IBM, Cisco and Capgemini.

IBN Live -- Infopark CEO Gigo Joseph will inaugurate Goal, an inter-company football tournament, organised by UST Global for Infopark based organisations at Cusat Ground in Kalamassery at 8 am on Saturday. Kerala Football Association president K M I Mather will felicitate the participating teams.

Business Wire -- Vidyo, Inc., the first company to deliver personal telepresence, today announced a partnership with UST Global®, a leading provider of IT services and solutions for Fortune 500 and Global 1000 enterprises..

The Hindu -- California-headquartered IT solutions provider UST Global has acquired Andare, a company engaged in developing mobile solutions for large enterprise CRM applications, for an undisclosed sum.

IBN Live -- When Mary, an employee with UST Global, started dancing at the atrium in Bhavani building in Technopark, many were taken aback by the rare move.

Business World -- Information technology spending in 2012 is estimated to grow by a mere 3.7 per cent to touch $3.78 trillion compared to the 6.9 per cent growth in the previous year, according to information technology (IT) research and advisory firm Gartner.

IBN LIVE -- Just two hours of sunlight and it is forty kilometres of happy biking. A sleek solar bicycle developed by the Trivandrum Global City of Innovation (TGCi) promises this and much more.

THE HINDU -- How safe are women when they travel alone? This question held the centre-stage at a public debate held in connection with International Women's Day on Friday in the city.

THE HINDU -- “There is something special about celebrating Holi thousands of kilometres away from home…,” Vaishali Gupta could go on and on. A native of Meerut in Uttar Pradesh, Vaishali was among the hundreds of techies who had a blast celebrating Holi on the Technopark campus.

THE TIMES OF INDIA -- More and more married Indian women are doing what would have been unthinkable not too long ago - grabbing opportunities to work abroad for advancing their career, leaving behind their husband and kids at home.

THE TIMES OF INDIA -- UST Global associate Destin Joy is one among three Technopark employees awarded the Microsoft MVP (Most Valuable Professional) award for his technical expertise and willingness to share time and information with others in his community.

The Hindu Business Line -- It's a well-known fact that the US drives the global information technology service market. Any change it introduces creates a ripple effect on the IT industry – the latest being a massive overhaul of the US medical coding scheme for health plans and services.

THE TIMES OF INDIA -- "The existence of a good, skilled talent pool and relatively lower attrition rates as opposed to the rest are key reasons behind starting operations in Kerala" says Alexander Varghese, Country Head India & VP Corporate Services, UST Global.

THE TIMES OF INDIA -- Despite a sense of gloom in some of the biggest markets for the IT sector, a sense of optimism was palpable during the three-day Nasscom India Leadership Forum that ended here on Thursday. However, a key takeaway from the summit was that despite strong growth, the IT industry will have to live in uncertainty for some time to come.

The Economic Times -- After being a prominent employer in the IT sector in tier 2 cities in Kerala, California-based IT services company UST Global has embarked on an expansion in Bangalore.

The International Business Times -- In an exclusive interview with the International Business Times, Murali Gopalan, who is the CIO of UST Global, a U.S.-based company with development centers across India, says that new investment projects in IT might suffer in the short and medium term due to the restraint in capital investments by companies.

JobBuzz Blog -- The previous year we noticed an increase in the rate of attrition in many industries. There have been various reasons behind this increased phenomenon. Apart from few industry specific reasons like skill base, that inspire people to change their jobs frequently, there are some primary reasons that are common across sectors. Although, because of inevitable factors like increased job opportunities in the Indian market, a Company has little control over their employees’ job switch, there are certain strategies that can commonly be applied to keep a check on attrition numbers thereby increasing employee retention. Here are few practices that can help Companies hire / retain best of the talents.

The Hindu -- Health promotion at work places has become a norm and Technopark isn't lagging behind. The wellness programmes are, of course, meant to decrease healthcare costs, and increase productivity.

The Hindu -- With focus definitely shifting from headcount-based approach to guaranteed service delivery concept in the wake of happenings on the global economic front, Indian information technology (IT) companies face three major near-term challenges, according to Murali Gopalan, Chief Information Officer of U.S.- headquartered UST Global.

expressbuzz.com -- Would it not be helful if you had a hands-free technique to manage your power point presentation? And if you knew PCs and monitors waste over 66 percent of the enery consumed by them, would you not opt for an efficient energy management tool? The thoughful innovations of UST Global which won Excellence Awards 2011 in 'Technology Innovation - Implemented and Initiated' category instituted by Kerala Management Association (KMA) included these and a head wear which helps a blind person to navigate surroundings with better awareness.

The Hindu Business Line -- During the 2nd Kerala Management Association (KMA) Awards for 2011, UST Global which has its operations in Technopark, Thiruvananthapuram, and in Infopark, Kochi, won Excellence Awards 2011 in the Technology Innovation category. The award was presented by Mr George Paul, Executive Director, Synthite Industrial Chemicals, to the winners at KMA's 31th annual management convention. Under the 'Technology Innovations - Implemented and Initiated category,' UST Global had submitted three innovations, all conceived and developed at The Apple Tree, UST's innovation gym. UST Global received this award for innovations for its 'Interactive Gesture Recognition' ; WOD or Wearable Obstacle Detector and PowerUS, an energy management tool.

The Hindu -- The Technopark Bicycle Club has been declared a runaway hit. Exactly one month since it began, the campus is abuzz with the blue-and-white bikes. Promoted as an effective solution to overcome traffic congestion and parking woes, and a boost for the green initiatives of the IT park, techies now hire cycles for several errands – like going for lunch or for covering the distance from the main gate to their offices. Now they are also allowed to take the cycles out of the campus as well.

The Hindu -- You invariably visit your ward's school during the school annual day. How about children visiting their parents' workplace? Or say, parents coming in to see where their children work? Even spouses are given an opportunity to see where their partners work. All this happens at Family Day, a one-of-its-kind annual event of UST Global.

siliconindia.com -- SiliconIndia the largest producer of technology conferences and special events organized the ‘Strategic HR Summit’ for human resource professionals that opened on 1stDecember, 2011 in Bangalore @ Taj Vivanta.

The Hindu -- Rangoli '11, the three-week festival organised by UST Global at Technopark, here, got off to a musical start on Thursday with the Maratha Light Infantry Regimental Centre Brass Band performing for the Technopark employees.

Marketwire.com -- UST Global is working with MMRGlobal to sell the Company's MyMedicalRecords Personal Health Record and MMRPro document management and imaging system(s) and integrate them with existing and new UST clients.

rediff.com -- After Gary Kasparov found the IBM Deep Blue computer making a mockery of his status as the world champion of chess in 1997, this must have been the most exasperating moment for mankind: IBM Watson, an artificial intelligence computer system capable of answering questions posed in natural language, beat Jeopardy! champion Ken Jennings earlier this year to score another victory in the machine-versus-man contest.

rediff.com -- Praveen Kumar Parameswaran, India Head, Sourcing, UST Global lists seven reasons why candidates fake their resume and also suggests ways to identify them. Fake resumes have been one of the most common challenges faced by companies. The challenge is existent across the globe. Candidates lie on their resume about various things like their education, years of experience, previous salary structure and even their expertise.

The Hindu -- Murali Gopalan, Senior Vice-President of the IT firm UST Global, says in an e-mail that Kerala needs to aim for 10 percent of the all-India IT export target of $200 billion by 2020. That will be Rs.1-lakh crore in today's exchange rates. Today, Kerala's IT exports amount to about Rs.1,000 crore. If this is to increase manifold by 2020, five lakh people need to be employed in IT companies in the State and 50 lakh square feet of commercial (IT-friendly) office space should be built.

rediff.com -- The HR profession has seen a dramatic shift over the past few years. From the days of personnel management, HR has now become a significant 'Board' function. HR professionals are today looked upon to provide strategic business partnership and play key roles in developing better business leaders and shaping world-class organisations.

The Hindu -- Hundreds of people, including school and college students, NCC cadets, IT professionals, and defence personnel, joined hands to clean up the beaches at Shanghumughom and Kovalam here on Sunday.

IBN Live -- CNN IBN showed Onam celebrations of UST Global with USsociates enjoying the festivity. This was aired in the morning news on September 9, 2011 and there on, was aired every hour across India.

The video titled 'The festival of plenty celebrates the annual visit of the noble demon king Mahabali from Pathalam (the underworld)' comprised of the fun and frolic within the Bhavani campus in Technopark, Trivandrum.

The Economic Times -- Krishna Prasad, General Manager of UST Global says "Many customers are looking for vendors to provide independent verification and validation (IV&V) services which are separate from the development process. This has led to a surge in demand for QA and testing services and fuelled the growth in testing-focused jobs. As a result, engineers with functional, technical or performance expertise are seeing QA and testing as a viable career path."

The Hindu Business Line -- A meeting with an information technology service company is usually all about loads of presentations, with some industry jargon too, right? Wrong, for it was a different experience at UST Global, a US-based company with development centres across India.

The Economic Times -- "We try to find clients where we can build deeper relationships," said Krishna Prasad, General Manager- India, UST Global. The firm has far fewer clients – 65 at rough estimate --than a traditional mid-sized company of their size would have.

THE TIMES OF INDIA -- Ajith kumar B, Director for Global HR in UST Global says there is a lot of uncertainty in the economic environment and so companies are cautious. "No one wants to build benches again. The dip in hiring may be a temporary phenomenon, but it has the potential to be around for several quarters," he says.

The Hindu Business Line -- UST Global, a California-based multinational company operating in the IT services and consulting space, has unveiled a novel continuing education initiative targeting management capability development for the IT workforce.

1888PressRelease -- Zinnov Management Consulting, a leading globalization advisory firm, is organizing the most awaited event of the year - its Annual India Conference, titled 'Globalization Summit 2011'at The Leela Palace, Bangalore on July 7, 2011. The event will be attended by more than 500 senior executives (special invitees) from Global MNCs and India Inc, and witness industry stalwarts sharing their views on the subject. UST Global^® as Silver Partners.

Femina -- In Chennai to promote Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR), Mary Johnson, senior director, CSR of UST Global from Seattle spoke to Anitha Ramachandran.

IBN Live -- The Group of Technology Companies (G-Tech), the industry body of software companies in the state, has proposed a new 'Kerala Model' for IT development. The suggestions, aimed at inclusive growth and expansion of IT industry to rural areas, were presented to the Chief Minister and IT Minister the other day, said G-Tech president V K Mathews.

REDWOOD CITY -- Informatica Corporation (NASDAQ: INFA) the world's number one independent provider of data integration software, today announced overwhelming industry support for Informatica 9.1, the industry's first unified data integration platform designed to unleash the full business potential of Big Data to empower the data centric-enterprise.

CIOL -- UST Global has launched a month-long programme as part of the Environment Day. This also includes an event called AroundUS, a reforming initiative where associates can choose any Community activities categorized – green, healthcare and education.

Business World Online -- COMPANIES can set themselves apart from competitors by having a special focus on corporate social responsibility (CSR), an executive of a United States-based information technology services firm said.

financialexpress.com -- KAILASH ATTAL, Head of the Global Practice (Managed Services) division of UST Global Inc, says cloud computing will be the key driver in the Indian IT industry, provided, the cloud is leveraged strategically with out-come-based model and unit-cost pricing. The California-based UST Global is approaching $400 million in annual revenues.

expressbuzz.com -- "UST will adopt two villages, the first one from Thiruvanathapuram and the other from Kochi. The adopted villages will be transformed completely in partnership with the government. The focus will be on three areas; health, environment and education," says Mary Johnson, Director, Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR), UST Global.

The Hindu Business Line -- "With ‘fake resumes' full of falsified information doing the rounds, the tech sector is taking a close look at claims."

The Economic Times -- "There is a new surge of interest in executive education in India. With high growth and globalisation beckoning it, India Inc. feels more than ever before the need for learning and development at an accelerated pace," expresses Prof. Debashis Chatterjee, director, IIM Kozhikode. At IIMK, broadly, for operational effectiveness, executive learning activities are divided into short-term offerings focusing on professional development and longterm offerings (education/career programmes).

The Hindu -- The Asian School of Business (ASB) will hold the fifth annual convocation of its Postgraduate Programme in Management (PGPM) at 4p.m. on April 9. The programme would be held at the School's new 'green' campus near the upcoming Technocity at Pallippuram.

The Hindu -- "Women have a critical role to play in the world today. A few unfortunate incidents should not cause them to withdraw into a cocoon. It is important to empower women, and that must happen through the cooperation of the entire society" said Alexander Varghese, Vice President (Corporate Services) and Country Head (India) of UST Global.

The Hindu -- UST Global celebrated International Women's Day on March 8 in a unique fashion. A presentation contest was organised by the Network of Women USsociates (NowU) at the offices of UST Global in Technopark. The theme was 'How to make Technopark the most women-friendly tech park in India'.

The Economic Times -- "Is there a single recipe that can keep your boss and spouse happy at the same time? Yes, if you are prepared to knock down..

Silicon India -- "The history of women in leadership roles always speaks of struggle and hard work. Challenges surrounded her from her early childhood, but she is intelligent and cunning..

The Hindu Business Line -- "Fluctuation in oil prices directly impacts the revenues of oil companies. The oil and gas companies allocate IT budgets keeping in mind their average revenues for a period", says Rajeev Nair, Director, Corporate Finance, US Technology, India.

Deccan Chronicle -- "If you are a top performer and a former employee of one of the top IT firms in India, then you might expect your old boss to come calling!

CIOL -- "Though we have been India since 1999, it is a relatively new market for us in business terms as we had started our business operations with companies in India about one and a half years back. ....." said Krishna Prasad, UST Global's General Manager - India.

business.in.com -- "In general, lenders have become cautious. They have become more stringent," says Sajesh Gopinath, Practice Head, BPO Services, UST Global. For example, earlier, you took into account the 20 most relevant data points to make a decision about the value of a house. Today, you need to go through the entire documentation. Lenders today insist on looking at photographs of houses at various angles to get a sense of the value.

CIOL -- After a period of recession, now things are apparently getting back to normalcy. In this backdrop, what are your expectations for 2011? UST is poised for a revenue growth of around 40 per cent in 2011. A large part of this would be managed services and outcome-based deals. said Arun Narayanan, COO, UST Global, Chennai.

The Hindu Business Line -- The services sector is undergoing a sea change from a service provider's perspective as well as from the viewpoint of the customer. The typical image of a company and its leaders is rapidly being replaced by 'Next Generation' dynamics and the market is willing to settle for nothing less, said Mr Krishna Prasad, Global Head of Delivery, Head of Delivery Excellence and Centre Head, Chennai.

SiliconIndia -- We have grown to 500 times our original strength, largely because about 60 percent of our workforce is located in Kerala. When we looked at the big cities—what we now call Tier I, at least in the Indian context—we saw the advent of a whole lot of industrial clusters, corridors, estates, hubs, and other business units.

CIOL -- Though 2011 will not be as dwindling as 2010, then it definitely is not going to be a cake walk either, feels Akanksha Prasad.

CIOL -- UST Global, a provider of IT and business process outsourcing services, said that the third edition of its annual Retail Week had 'Innovation' in the retail sector as its focus.

The Hindu Business Line -- The five-day annual Retail Week conducted by IT services and solutions major UST Global concluded here on Friday.

The Economic Times -- "Over the last 14 years since organized retail came to stay in India, the market has seen a euphoria and then a year of despondence in 2008-09, and then a reinvention in 2010. The industry is still young, considering that many countries took four decades to have a mature retail industry. What is perceptible, though, is that the food vertical is showing a sharp increase, propelling the organized retail format in the country", says K Radhakrishnan, president of Future Fresh Foods, part of the Future group.

The Hindu -- HR professionals need to rise up to these expectations. The service sector in the country is highly people based. "HR in India is people-centric," says UST Global's Vice President and Global Head-HR, Niketh Sundar.

The Hindu -- UST Global's Chief Wellness Officer Barry Newton worries about the bags under his eyes. He knows what it implies. "Change in sleep patterns and lack of sleep are major problems in the IT industry," Barry says.

Financial Chronicle -- Over the years whenever IT outsourcing deals failed, 90 per cent of the times clients were to blame because they did not know what they actually want, Stephanie Moore said.

10/8/2010

Asianet News -- UST Global CEO, Sajan Pillai, was interviewed by popular journalist Manoj Das on "Friday Edition," an exclusive business telecast on South India's most popular TV channel, Asianet News. The interview, shot at our Kochi facility, is about UST Global's humble beginnings, coming of age, expansion plans, VISION 2012, and cultural moorings. Sajan also highlights the role of IT companies in eliminating social displacement.

Click here to watch the video, with subtitles.

Business World -- US-based information technology (IT) consultancy firm UST Global plans to increase its Filipino employees by more than a thousand next year, executives said.

The Hindu -- Over the past one week, employees of UST Global, an IT firm based at Technopark here, have discovered that they can do as much at home wielding a spade and broom as at office with a keyboard and mouse.

9/2010

UST USsociate Renjith Ramachandran wins Nokia's "Make My App" Idea Contest! Their ideas would be converted into real apps and released in the Nokia Ovi Store.

From over 8000 brilliant app ideas, 3 outstanding ones were chosen by the judges.

Renjith says "Our innovation culture made me think and contribute when situations demand. It`s really great to be here in such a company which values innovation a lot. It our innovation culture will help our customers and touch the lives of millions across the globe."

Renjith's idea was for a VisualAid - App for the visually challenged. This application would help visually challenged people to move around easily. By using a camera, it can give notifications about obstacles, roads and other objects either via vibration or as voice responses to the blue-tooth headset. The advanced version of this app would even read the newspapers by using the high definition camera and convert it into speech and send it to the headset. When asked how he came up with such a noble idea, he said, "Gadgets are getting smarter everyday so I just wanted to make use of its capabilities to help people to live better and overcome their disabilities and make a better and smarter world to live in!"

The Hindu -- UST Global is turning on the heat with F1 partner, Virgin Racing. VR-01, the first of its kind, new-generation Formula One dream machine is now parked on the UST Global lobby in Technopark.

The Hindu -- UST executives are fond of saying that their new campus, adjacent to Technopark, will be iconic in more ways than one. The campus will be "intelligent" with a "smart and connected real-estate solution" developed by the networking major Cisco.

8/2010

UST USsociate Dileep Devapal wins Nokia's "Make My App" Idea Contest! Their ideas would be converted into real apps and released in the Nokia Ovi Store.

From more than 6000 brilliant ideas to the voted shortlist of 90, judges had the impossible task of picking the final 12 winning ideas. Due to the sheer high quality of all the entries, they decided to choose 13 ideas instead. Dileep's Document Creator Manager was one of the winning ideas. The Document Creator Manager app can utilize the macro mode of the excellent 12MP camera to take optimized photos of a document and convert it into a WordPDF document which can be saved on the phone. The operation should be done on phone instead of uploading images to a 3rd party server. The app should also be able to manage these documents. This would certainly help reduce the carbon footprint and reduce the need for printing documents for reference

When asked how he came up with the idea he said, "It was all about the category name. When thinking about going green the first thing that came to my mind was saving trees and one good way for that was to save paper. I believed that if users were presented a way of reducing their effort and saving paper at the same time they would certainly opt for it."

The Hindu Business Line -- Networking giant Cisco will use its Smart+Connected Real Estate Solution to wire up the futuristic global Campus being set up here by IT services and solutions provider UST Global.

The Campus is being developed in two phases over 36 acres adjacent to the Technopark, according to Mr Joe Nalkara, President, UST Global.

CIO Update -- India will remain part of your outsourcing strategy and that is despite increasing complaints about rising costs and diminishing work quality, said Stephanie Moore, Former Forrester Outsourcing analyst and chief strategist for UST Global, a global IT outsourcer. The reason? No other nation has the massive skilled labor availability that India has and that is that. But the hunt is on for alternative sites and every outsourcer is trolling for new destinations. The surprise is there are so many new to the game. Where to go beyond India, China, the Philippines, and Brazil ― the obvious ABI locales? There are plenty of choices.

3/08/2010

Marsha Blakeslee receives the RETAIL LEADERSHIP AWARD in India from the Asia Retail Congress held recently in Mumbai. The Retail Leadership Award is the most prestigious award an individual can receive at the Asia Retail Congress and is awarded in recognition of professional efforts in the field of retail.

The Theme of Asia Retail Congress this year was "Creating a New Vision of Retail". Marsha received the award and spoke at the event regarding trends and insights in the retail industry.

The Asia Brand Congress is represented by 50 countries from across Asia and the world. The event hosted 100 Participants from different countries + 200 Participants from India and about 100 invited Guests, Speakers, Dignitaries and Award Winners. The Congress is in its 3rd year and is governed by an Advisory Council consisting of senior professionals from the industry".

CIO Update -- UST Global CMO Stephanie Moore spoke at the 11th annual Nasscom BPO Strategy Summit 2009 on "New rules of client engagement". CIOL News covered some of her points in an article.

The Hindu Business Line -- The best compliment a company could get is for an analyst evaluating it to join its top ranks. UST Global, a 6,000-strong software services company with development centres in India, the Philippines and Chile, now falls in that league.

The Orange County Business Journal -- The Orange County Business Journal quoted UST Global CEO Sajan Pillai, "We become more attractive when companies are facing financial pressure. They still have to run their businesses, so we become more and more relevant. We do very well in times of economic scrutiny."

The Sunday Times -- Eureka Technology Partners (ETP) said this week that it has signed a major IT infrastructure management contract and strategic partnership with UST Global, an IT services company headquartered in the US.

Silicon India -- Silicon India interviewed UST Global CEO Sajan Pillai. Mr. Pillai talked about how business success isn’t about having better technology; it’s About USTing technology better. That means making sure that you truly understand your client’s business problem and help them to grow.

IT Jungle -- When it was time to modernize applications and begin the transition to a service oriented architecture (SOA), Countrywide Financial (long been regarded as one of the largest users of IBM Power Systems technology) brought in UST Global, an IT services firm, and its recently launched IT consulting division.

Deccan Chronicle -- Deccan Chronicle interviewed UST CEO Sajan Pillai to find out some of the things that make him successful.

Business Standard -- Technology company UST Global has inked a five-year contract with Ohio-based Dana Holding Corporation to provide e-business application development and support services leveraging a global delivery model on its .NET and Java-based platforms.

Sify.com -- UST Global, a leading provider of IT services and solutions, has entered into a five-year contract with Ohio-based Dana Holding Corporation to provide e-business application development and support services.

"Dana had been seeking to move to a global sourcing to lower its operating costs for its e-business applications. In addition, it needed a stable resource support structure to handle emerging e-business development requirements," said Bill Umberger, director of IT corporate services for Dana Holding Corporation.

"Dana was looking for a company that would work collaboratively with its IT department and demonstrate a mutual commitment to long-term success," said Mike Zerkel, general manager, North America, UST Global.

Dana Holding Corporation is a world leader in the supply of axles; driveshafts; and structural, sealing, and thermal-management products.

CFO.com -- CFO.com covered Krishna Sudheendra’s appointment as the new CFO at UST Global.

CIO -- CIO Editor Rick Cook interviewed several IT executives including UST Global CIO Tony Velleca about the benefits and ROI of PPM including governance, resource and process management and project control.

The Smart Techie -- The Smart Techie interviewed Manjula Arun, Director, Mainframe Center of Excellence at UST Global, who talks about her journey and her achievements as the head of UST’s training group.

The Orange County Business Journal -- The Orange County Business Journal interviewed UST Global CEO Sajan Pillai about the company’s services, customers, growth and plans for the future.

Business Week -- According to Business Week, "UST Global ranked second in creating a governance program that orchestrates the environmental goals and needs of clients. The company also scored second in encouraging the development of environmentally friendly technologies."

Chief Learning Officer -- One of the most important requirements for learning is accessibility. Any efforts to make development programs informative, up to date and engaging will be all for naught if users can’t even find them in the first place.