Sierra Atlantic to ramp up headcount by 500

Bets big on outsourced product development

Sierra Atlantic is eyeing a 40-50 per cent growth in revenues and headcount this year. The player in enterprise application services is betting big on the outsourced product development (OPD) segment this year from which it is targeting 35 per cent of its revenues.

Addressing the media, Sarath Sura, managing director, Sierra Atlantic, said, "We achieved a 40 per cent growth in revenues last year. This year, we see a 40-50 per cent growth in revenues and a similar increase in headcount."

Sierra Atlantic employs over 1,000 people and will be looking at hiring up to 500 people this year. The company has over 350 engineers and product architects supporting the OPD segment and expects this team to grow to 800 by 2007.

"We expect 35 per cent of our revenues to come from independent software vendors (ISVs) this year as compared to 25 per cent last year," Sura said.

Some of Sierra Atlantic's OPD customers include Agile, BEA, Oracle and Siebel. The company expects to add 10 new ISV customers before the end of this year.

According to a Nasscom-McKinsey report, OPD is expected to become an $8 billion-$11 billion opportunity by 2008. Frost & Sullivan states that the R&D outsourcing market for IT in India is expected to grow to $9.1 billion by 2010.