The Hindu Business Line : iGATE centre for testing services in Bangalore

, iGATE Global Solutions Ltd has expanded its service offering portfolio by foraying into independent verification and validation (IV&V) services and has set up a centre of excellence in Bangalore to showcase its solutions.

The iGATE's board member and Chief delivery officer, Mr Mohan Sekhar, said the company was investing $2 million in the CoE and plans to double the headcount in its testing practice to around 600 over the next 12-15 months.

iGATE has already signed up three new customers for its IV&V services and has a total of some 10 customers in its testing practice. Customers such as Royal Bank of Canada, General Electric among others are already using the testing services.

Revenues

Currently, iGATE derives about six per cent of its IT services revenues from the testing practice, which it aims to grow to around 8-10 per cent next year, he said. For the current financial year, iGATE is projecting revenue of $10 million from its testing practice.

Mr Manjunatha Hebbar, Associate Vice-President and Head of IV&V Services, said the CoE would create solutions and frameworks that can be leveraged by the iGATE's diverse range of Fortune 1000 clients. The CoE will focus on test process consulting, test automation, performance testing and functional testing services for enterprise and product companies, he said.

Strategy

The Bangalore CoE is in line with the company's strategy of creating a chain of COEs in chosen areas across its software development centres. iGATE has six COEs at present. Recently, the company set up a CoE focussing on enterprise resource planning in Hyderabad.