Improvements


Van den Brande left in 2006 and subsequently rejoined Microsoft; Rao left in early 2007 for Kotak Bank. However, work continued with the Intellect Suite, with much of it still focused on SOA. To this end, in early 2006 Polaris teamed up with US-based Webify Solutions, with a view to integrating the latter’s Webify Industry Fabric for configuring, controlling and governing SOA environments with Intellect Suite. In a bid to attract larger banks in more established markets, Polaris sought to improve the scalability of its products with the launch in February 2007 of its Intellect products on HP Integrity servers. Polaris’ concentration on SOA appeared to have paid off by


January 2007, when it announced a win at a global top-ten bank (unnamed) for its Intellect Cash Management and Liquidity platform. According to Polaris, the implementation was due to begin at the bank’s headquarters in Spain with subsequent roll out in North America and Latin America. By this time it looked as though cash management had become an area of strength for the supplier, with a number of other customers. Headcount increased by 569 to 8408 in the final quarter of 2006 alone and the company released good quarterly results, with stable income from Citigroup and growth elsewhere. Progress in Europe was a significant factor, with this region contributing almost one-third of revenues by the end of 2006 (with 35 per cent from the Americas and 33 per cent from Asia Pacific). In April 2006 Polaris announced the building of a new development and support centre in Northern Ireland, in a move designed to improve the company’s position within the European market. The Belfast facility was due to be developed in three stages: first a QA testing centre, then a software development centre and finally a 24x7 support centre for European customers. Significant funding for this development was provided by Invest NI. As part of the European effort, in the first half of 2007 Polaris set up a partnership with Danish systems development and integration company, Ementor, to try to bring joint offerings to the Nordic region. According to Rajiv Mathur, Polaris’ regional manager for Denmark, the two companies had been working for two and a half years, with Polaris providing resources for Ementor, but the relationship would now be a strategic partnership for the region. Ementor had been actively looking for a new partner. ‘We looked into around ten companies in India as well as some in Russia, Lithuania and countries in the Nordic region,’ said Niels Henrik Sodemann, managing director of Ementor Denmark. ‘Although some in Russia were more culturally similar, we were impressed by the commitment to


quality shown by Polaris.’ This was something that Sodemann hoped Ementor could take out of the partnership:


‘We are hoping to inherit some of their processes and ways of working’. A key part of the partnership was Polaris’ intellectual


property. This was something that Sodemann saw being ‘localised for the region’s business systems’. The aim of the partnership, he said, was to ‘beat competitors on time to market for new products; Polaris’ intellectual properties and capacity will help us to do this’. Mathur saw such tie- ups as important for the future of Polaris. ‘Polaris is growing organically and partnerships play a huge part in this. They are very important, especially in new markets where it can take you years to know the market.’ As a further indication of progress, Polaris announced


strong figures for the year ending 31st March 2007. Revenues were up by nearly 26 per cent to Rs 10,323.7 million from Rs 8205 million in 2006, and operating profit was up 374 per cent to Rs 1010.6 million from Rs 213 million. Progress in Europe was a significant factor during this period. Padmini Sharath Kumar, senior vice president at Polaris,


attributed the improvement to changes to the Polaris business model. ‘Four years back, we embarked on the leadership programme of preparing Polaris to become a niche player in providing specialised technology solutions to the banking, financial services and insurance space and become one of the top ten most respected global organisations in our area of expertise.’ As a result of this, Kumar said, ‘we had to migrate our business model from a pure cost-arbitrage based services business model to intellectual property led or asset- based services business model’. This change of approach was based around the Intellect Suite. According to Kumar, the last financial year had seen, ‘147.52 per cent annual growth in Intellect-led revenues’. The vendor had wins for various parts of the system across the globe, the majority of these coming in Asia Pacific. The most popular platform was the cash and liquidity module with seven wins. The wealth management part of Intellect also had a clutch of wins. The future for Polaris was, according to Jain, ‘following


the requirements of tier one banks’. ‘If you can do this, the requirements of lower tier banks will be easier to package and roll out.’ He believed that this strategy would produce a ‘hockey stick model’ where it would take ‘four to six quarters to be accepted in the marketplace’. Jain believed that by following the SOA model, something that ‘banks are moving towards’, Polaris would continue to see ‘growth for the coming years’.


The future still seemed to include partnerships. In early 2008, Polaris followed Misys and Callataÿ & Wouters by


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