Global guru.

Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) has been on something of a growth tear over the past year. As India's biggest IT outsourcer, Mumbai, India-based TCS provides software and services for an impressive roster of clients, including IBM, Microsoft, General Electric, Morgan Stanley, American Express, Merrill Lynch, Lucent Technologies and Nortel, in 55 countries.

Under the stewardship of CEO Subramaniam Ramadorai (known as "Ram"), the global software and services companies racked up revenues of $4.3 billion in 2006-'07, an increase of 45 percent over the previous year. What's more, it logged an impressive $950 million in profits.

This banner year is the most recent in a long tradition of growth spurts for the not-so-new IT company. TCS, after all, was launched in 1968, four years before Ramadorai joined the company in 1972.

Founded as a computer service company, TCS reinvented itself to become a software company in the early 1990s, pursuing growth through both product development and mergers and acquisitions. Since Ramadorai took the helm as CEO in 1996, TCS has been moving up the value chain by returning to its service roots--an area where its broad experience and global reach offer a competitive edge. Under his leadership, TCS's Technology Excellence Centers developed knowledge, expertise and equipment in specialized technology like SAP, AS400 and DEC, as well as products from Microsoft, Silicon Graphics, Sun and Tandem.

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

"We build platforms for small and medium enterprises that don't want to be immersed in infrastructure," says Ramadorai, who sees corporations increasingly looking to secure complete IT outsourcing contracts with one or two core vendors. "Over the last 25 years, we have matured in terms of discipline and scalable models to develop the ability to absorb third-party technologies and accurately and quickly build and support an integrated single platform. We can then take these capabilities in one geography and replicate them across other geographies."

In addition to a vast wealth of experience in IT, the 62-year-old Ramadorai credits TCS's youthful and enthusiastic employee base for enabling the company to respond fast. The average age of TCS's 92,000 associates is just 28. "It's easier to change mind-sets at that age than when you're like me," he jokes, adding that working with younger-generation employees is invigorating. "You challenge yourself, and you challenge them when you interact."

The company also leverages its own technological capabilities to connect those employees--who span 53 countries--with one another, as well as with its clients. "We can provide employee-based services from any part of the world in real time, plus our customers can access this digitized system," says Ramadorai. "They can see what is happening with their projects in real time, and some of the best practices we achieve can be shared across the system.

The ability to effectively connect people and deliver services from across the globe will be increasingly essential to develop a customer's comfort level with sourcing functions offshore, he adds. "The way to deliver services is going through fundamental changes," says Ramadorai, whose goal is to make TCS a top 10 IT services player by 2010. "It's no longer about what you push to the customers, but what they need and whether you can deliver that effectively. Whether it's in financial services, banking, insurance or another area, services will be delivered differently in the future."