Clinton, in India, says ‘outsourcing is a concern for many’

But the US rejects protectionism, she asserts

US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton finished up her trip to India on Monday with a promise to improve cooperation on high-tech trade between the two countries, but she offered no specifics about how that will be accomplished.

Instead, Clinton left with an agreement that the two countries will continue talking "with the objective of facilitating smoother trade in high technology between the two economies."

That statement appears to be an effort to lessen protectionist fears in India triggered by a number of events, including a comment in May, by President Barack Obama that the US has developed a tax code "that says you should pay lower taxes if you create a job in Bangalore, India, than if you create one in Buffalo, NY"

But what has really drawn the concern of India’s tech industry is the threat of action by Congress, namely legislation by Sens. Chuck Grassley, (R-Iowa), and Dick Durbin, (D-Ill.), that would set a number of restrictions on overseas firms that need H-1B visas to deliver their services.

In an interview on NDTV (New Delhi Television Ltd.), Clinton was asked about the concerns of India’s business community by reporter Barkha Dutt. (Excerpt begins at the 8:50 minute mark.)

"Outsourcing is such a big issue for the Indian business community. We all remember President Obama’s great metaphor of ‘say yes to Buffalo, no to Bangalore’ — is this an unavoidable protectionism given the global economic meltdown?" asked Dutt.

"I think it’s a friendly competition," said Clinton, who went on to explain that any country "is going to want to make sure we have enough jobs for our people. What President Obama has said is we do not want a return to protectionism."

"So we have to figure out how we are going to work together," said Clinton. "Outsourcing is a concern for many communities and businesses in my country, so how we handle that is something that we’re very focused on doing in a way that doesn’t disrupt the great flow of trade and services that go between our countries."

The agreement that the US signed in India will be taken up by what is being called the High Technology Cooperation Dialog.

"I think the critical issue is whether all stakeholders have a voice in the policymaking process," said Ron Hira, an assistant professor of public policy at the Rochester Institute of Technology and author of Outsourcing America. "To date, US workers, especially American IT workers, have had no official channel with which to promote their interests," he said.

Hira said that it is clear that both US business interests and Indian business interests are represented in the talks, ‘But is there anyone representing the interests of US workers? The answer is no. Since they are absent, or a more accurate description would be ‘excluded,’ American IT workers’ interests can easily be ignored by politicians in the State and Commerce Department(s)," said Hira.

Source: http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9135724/Clinton_in_India_says_outsourcing_is_a_concern_for_many_?taxonomyId=1

Breaking the Billion-Gate Barrier

Hardware emulators able to handle one-billion ASIC gates can shorten time to tapeout, improve product quality and eliminate costly re-spins, while reducing software development time ahead of silicon of the most complex SoC ever designed.

As we head into San Francisco for the annual Design Automation Conference (DAC) at the end of this month, the designer community has reason to be enthusiastic about this year’s event. For example, the conference is offering a new User Track where designers will describe their real-world problems and how they solved them. On the Exhibit Floor, designers can see some real breakthroughs, including a hardware emulator capable of handling up to one-billion application specific integrated circuit (ASIC) gates.

The popularity of tools such as emulation for hardware/software co-verification has never been stronger. That’s because designers implementing System-on-Chip (SoC) devices must be able to simultaneously verify the correctness of both hardware and embedded software. This is especially true as software becomes a key product differentiator, the time to market compresses yet again and design sizes are hitting the one-billion ASIC gates threshold – unthinkable numbers not all that long ago.

It’s also true that coding the software part of an SoC consistently takes longer than it does to design the hardware, which has forced silicon vendors to wait for working silicon before software development begins. And, the fewer software applications written for a chip, the less likely the chip will be successful in the market. Therefore, achieving a working prototype for software development well in advance of silicon has become a top priority.

That’s why hardware/software co-verification tools have given hardware designers and software developers a reason to cheer. They give these teams with different skill sets a way to effectively communicate and work together, a far cry from the hardware-centric tools supporting hardware designers only that EDA consistently churned out until recently. Design teams view this shift as a welcome change since the SoC methodology combines software and hardware to form a complete system.

Recent enhancements in emulation technology are enabling the handling of one-billion ASIC gate designs at execution speed of multi-megahertz. That means that they are able to process billions of verification cycles – the ability to boot an OS like Linux, for instance – in few minutes.

These powerful "bug busting" emulators can imitate real hardware behavior, essential to firmware integration, and track the behavior of internal hardware signals. They can link a software debugger to the hardware debugger for tracing a software bug in the hardware domain and vice versa. And, emulators can act as a self-contained ASIC prototype driven by embedded testbenches, by a virtual software electronic system level (ESL) model or by an actual target system. They can achieve all of the above at a higher performance rate than traditional emulators, effectively performing both hardware verification and embedded software validation of very complex and very large SoCs.

Hardware emulators able to handle one-billion ASIC gates can shorten time to tapeout, improve product quality and eliminate costly re-spins, while reducing software development time ahead of silicon of the most complex SoC ever designed. More important, they are less expensive than traditional emulation, easier to use and flexible enough for a current project or the next one. Finally, hardware designers and software developers at last can share the same system and design representations.

After years discussing co-verification strategies with hundreds of design teams worldwide, I’m happy to report that there are solutions to managing the billion-gate design challenge. I invite you to walk the DAC Exhibit Floor and be pleasantly surprised by what you may find in the way of new tools and methodologies to solve your toughest co-verification problems. Stop by the EVE booth (#908, South Hall) to see firsthand how we broke the billion-gate barrier with ZeBu-Server, scalable and affordable emulation.

Source: http://www.chipdesignmag.com/display.php?articleId=3488

Reliance Plans to Outsource Management of Wired Services

Reliance Communications Ltd. plans to outsource the management of its wired services network in a deal likely to be worth more than $750 million, a company executive said Wednesday.

"We want to outsource voice and data wired transport network (the fixed-line network). The contract is to maintain and manage all parts of this network, including the towers, power and cable networks," Sandip Biswas, head of managed services at Reliance Communications, told Dow Jones Newswires.

He said the contract for wired services is likely to be bigger than the $750 million, five-year outsourcing order given last year for its wireless network to a joint venture between Reliance Communications and France’s Alcatel-Lucent.

The joint venture, in which Alcatel-Lucent has a 67% stake, will be among the bidders for the new contract, Mr. Biswas said.

He said Reliance is likely to first implement the system for the wired services network on an experimental basis in 5-10 service areas in the next three months, and then cover the entire country in the subsequent three months.

Reliance Communications, part of the Anil Dhirubhai Ambani Group, is India’s second-largest mobile services provider by subscriber base.

At the end of May, the company had 1.12 million fixed-line phone subscribers, according to data on the Web site of India’s telecom regulator. The company provides also national and international long distance voice, video and data network services.

Earlier Wednesday, Alcatel-Lucent said it will double its revenue from its Indian operations by the end of this year.

"We are on course to double India revenue by the year end, and it is not on a small base as you think," Sean Dolan, Alcatel-Lucent’s president for Asia-Pacific, told Dow Jones Newswires.

"We may now want to consolidate some of our offices here in India."

Alcatel-Lucent’s revenue from its Indian operations last year wasn’t available.

Source: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124644515537679013.html

US Protectionism Could Lead to Trade War, Says Nasscom

US protectionism targeting Indian outsourcers may be met by retaliatory measures such as blocking access to Indian markets, India’s National Association of Software and Service Companies (Nasscom) said on Tuesday.

Describing the US tax system as "broken", US President Barack Obama said in May that it’s a tax code "that says you should pay lower taxes if you create a job in Bangalore, India, than if you create one in Buffalo, New York".

Though the changes proposed to the tax code are not likely to impact the Indian outsourcing industry, the statement by Obama has been widely interpreted in India as targeting the country’s large outsourcing industry which gets over 50 percent of its revenue from the US

Legislation introduced in April by Senators Chuck Grassley, (R-Iowa), and Dick Durbin, (D-Ill.) aims to put curbs on the use of H-1B visas, so that the visa program "should complement the US workforce, not replace it".

As unemployment goes up in the countries to which Indian’s outsourcing industry exports services, there are likely to be increasing demands for creating jobs in those countries, said Som Mittal, president of Nasscom.

"Once you take protectionist measures, it doesn’t stop there," Mittal said. India is a large market for a variety of products including defense equipment, and there could be a trade war, he cautioned.

Nasscom is focusing on conveying to the US and other countries that Indian outsourcing companies can help their companies get more efficient and cut costs in the economic downturn. It wants the Indian outsourcing industry to be identified as "part of the solution and not the problem", Mittal said.

Indian outsourcers are also taking steps to increase services delivery closer to customers, which will mean creation of jobs in countries like the US, said Pramod Bhasin, chairman of Nasscom.

Indian business process outsourcing (BPO) companies will have to change their business model in the future to deliver services from multiple locations worldwide, so that they deliver from where the customers want it, he said.

Profit margins will not get affected by the higher costs in those locations, because the work done there will be high-end, he added.

The Indian BPO industry is expected to post a revenue growth of about 15 percent this year, despite the global economic downturn which appears to have bottomed out, Bhasin said.

Source: http://www.pcworld.com/article/166399/us_protectionism_could_lead_to_trade_war_says_nasscom.html

Telstra confirms outsourcing contracts

TELSTRA has awarded $1.2 billion worth of new outsourcing contracts after the telco unveiled EDS, Infosys and IBM as the survivors of its IT partners roster rationalization.  Telstra has been reviewing its IT outsourcing contracts since last year, when the telco announced it would trim its list of major IT suppliers from four to two in an effort to reduce costs and streamline providers.

Previously, Telstra’s application development and maintenance contracts were held by Satyam, EDS, IBM GS and Infosys.

In March The Australian revealed the telco had dumped scandal-ridden outsourcer Satyam from its applications support contract, believed to be worth $32 million a year, and replaced it with EDS.

The Australian also revealed that Telstra had favored Infosys over IBM for its multimillion-dollar applications support contract.

Telstra today confirmed that EDS and Infosys will pick up application development and maintenance contracts worth a combined $450 million over the next five years, while IBM will remain a strategic partner in this area.

While losing out on its software and legacy applications support work, IBM has won a renewed IT Operations Services Agreement to manage the telco’s infrastructure.

This contract is worth an estimated $745 million over five years, and will see IBM maintain datacentre mainframe operations.

Telstra chief information officer John McInerney said the new agreements would deliver significant benefits to the telco’s transformation program.

“This is an important milestone for Telstra IT ," he said. "One of the key outcomes of our IT transformation is the delivery of operational excellence.

"These consolidated contracts contribute to our strategy and ensure an ongoing investment with our key partners.”

Source: http://www.australianit.news.com.au/story/0,24897,25609583-15306,00.html

Wal-Mart shortlists TCS, Infosys, Wipro for $500 million deal

Wal-Mart Stores has shortlisted top Indian tech firms, including TCS, Infosys and Wipro, for an outsourcing contract potentially worth up to $500 million over next few years, as the retailer seeks to award multiple contracts for managing its business applications and other back office activities.

At least two people familiar with Wal-Mart’s outsourcing strategy told ET on conditions of anonymity that the retailer is expected to start outsourcing more to India within six months.

“Wal-Mart has been testing the waters by outsourcing smaller projects to companies such as Infosys, TCS and Wipro. Now, the retailer wants to flesh out a more comprehensive outsourcing strategy and has shortlisted these tech vendors,” said a senior executive of one of the tech firms exploring business opportunities with Wal-Mart. He requested anonymity because he is not authorized to speak to media.

When contacted by ET last week, Wal-Mart spokesman John Simley confirmed his company is in discussions with several service providers, but declined to elaborate any further. “Certainly, we feel our company has a lot to offer India and we hope to grow our business there. We are always in discussions with potential service providers, but we have nothing to announce at this time,” he said.

However, unlike many other companies seeking to outsource in order to bring down costs, Wal-Mart’s outsourcing is more about globalizing its information technology sourcing initiatives. At a time when most companies are struggling to grow their business, Wal-Mart announced $15 billion share buy-back program earlier this month, as the retailer continues to woo more customers. Officials at Wipro, TCS and Infosys declined to offer any comments about the Wal-Mart contract.

Some of the world’s top retailers, including UK’s Tesco and American specialty retailer Home Depot, have been outsourcing projects to Indian third party service providers, including TCS and Infosys, apart from their own captive centres in order to support their existing IT systems and also develop newer applications. Tesco for instance, saves over $60 million every year by outsourcing its IT projects to India.

Wal-Mart, which has, so far, been depending upon its large in-house IT team is now seeking to globalize its IT operations, especially since the retailer is now actively planning to grow its business from emerging markets such as India. With almost $400 billion in annual revenues, the retailer also continues to look at establishing a captive technology centre in India, however, this could not be confirmed.

“Wal-Mart already has a sourcing operation in the country, apart from its Bharti joint venture, it’s natural for the retailer to explore various ways of leveraging its Indian presence,” another person familiar with the company’s sourcing strategy told ET on conditions of anonymity.

Meanwhile, Wal-Mart’s outsourcing of IT and back office projects is not expected to impact local US jobs, as the retailer is very sensitive about rising unemployment in the country. In fact, Wal-Mart said earlier this month that it will add around 22,000 new jobs in the US by adding over 150 new stores to its existing network of around 7,900 retail outlets.

Source: http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/Infotech/ITeS/Wal-Mart-shortlists-TCS-Infosys-Wipro-for-500-mn-deal/articleshow/4629457.cms

Wipro may outsource work to Egypt

India, the offshoring capital of the world, is now outsourcing software and back-office projects to Egypt as vendors like Wipro plan
to send more domestic work to the most populous Arab country to leverage lower costs and availability of skilled professionals.

Wipro, which counts Bharti Airtel, Unitech Wireless and Dena Bank among its top customers, said with 10-15 % lower costs than India, and availability of required technical skills across different programming languages including Windows and Unix, Egypt is emerging as an attractive location for offshoring.

“We believe that 20% of our work can be offshored to Egypt,” said Anand Sankaran, senior VP and business head, India and Middle East Business, Wipro. “We are offshoring jobs from Middle East and India to Egypt.”

Egypt’s attractive subsidies for creating local employment which includes incentives like waiver on training costs and newrecruit salaries is making it compelling for companies like Wipro to seriously consider sending more work to the country.

“The government is providing different subsidies towards training and education of new hires. We plan to hire 400 professionals in Egypt within two years,” Mr Sankaran added. Wipro currently employs 100 professionals at its Cairo centre. Almost 30,000 of 3,30,000 students graduating every year from Egyptian universities are from computing and engineering background.

For businesses, lower corporate tax rates along with other incentives make Egypt a very compelling destination to invest. Last year, Egypt attracted FDI worth $13.2 billion, and by 2010, the country wants to have FDI of around $10 billion.

“Egypt has already reduced taxes from 40% to 20% and ITIDA does help multinationals with incentives like subsidizing the training of professionals,” said Hazem Abdulazim, chief executive of the Information Technology Industry Development Agency (ITIDA), Egypt.

At a time when customers and vendors are seeking alternatives to arrest rising costs, where 10-15 % annual wage inflation was a norm until last year, Egypt can help the companies balance their costs better. “Egypt’s low wage inflation of 5% compared to 10-15 % in other emerging locations, and low currency fluctuation of the Egyptian Pound vis-a-vis US dollar, means that the costs of operating in the region will remain stable,” he added.

While Wipro is currently one of the Indian software exporter having significant presence in Egypt, others including TCS are understood to be evaluating a location for establishing a development centre in the country. When contacted by ET last week, a TCS spokesperson did not offer any comments.

According to research firm Gartner, Indian customers will need to look beyond the limits of their own geographical boundaries, much like their Western counterparts.

“Gartner predicts that Indian companies will increasingly go offshore in their sourcing strategies, which will result in outsourcing deals offered by some Indian companies that include higher end parts of service (for example, design and architecture, and business consulting) delivered from other parts of the world,” Gartner had said around two years ago.

However, Egypt does not pose any threat to India’s dominance in the global outsourcing industry. “When it comes to the IT/ITeS sectors, Egypt and India complement each other utilizing their strengths to open new markets, forge closer ties between Egyptian and Indian companies and make the best use of their abilities,” Abdulazim added.

Source: http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/Infotech/Wipro-may-outsource-work-to-Egypt/articleshow/4574130.cms

SRP may outsource computer services

Salt River Project officials said they could outsource 40 to 50 information-technology workers’ jobs after already offering severance packages to nearly 100 employees this year.

Utility officials said they are considering the move to cut costs amid sluggish customer growth and that they have to pursue any reasonable option to keep utility rates low.

Regulators who oversee other utilities in the state are concerned with the outsourcing, particularly because SRP is a political subdivision of the state.

They said that outsourcing jobs to other states or countries would not likely be allowed at other utility companies.

SRP officials have been meeting with outsourcing companies to discuss how they would handle the utility’s computer services, and could request proposals from those companies to perform the work, said Kevin Nielsen, SRP’s information-technology services manager.

The employees who could be replaced do not deal with customer service, he said, and SRP or the outsourcing company could rehire some of them.

"We asked several vendors to come in and tell us how they would go about outsourcing," Nielsen said. "It’s a mixed bag. One has a data center in Tempe, one in Colorado, some are in the Philippines, Brazil or India."

SRP has been considering cost-cutting options for its information-technology division because an analysis by EquaTerra, an international outsourcing consultancy, showed that SRP spends more than the industry average on its computer services, he said.

Nielsen would not disclose what SRP spends on the division because he said that would tip off the companies bidding on the outsourcing work.

SRP spokesman Scott Harelson said the economy is to blame.

"Our revenues are down significantly, but our expenses remain relatively high," he said. "So we need to look for opportunities to save money and try to keep our rates low."

SRP is not subject to the same oversight by the Corporation Commission as other utilities such as Arizona Public Service Co. or Tucson Electric Power.

A 14-member board of directors governs SRP.

Nielsen said it’s unclear if the board will be asked to approve outsourcing.

Some board members said that outsourcing should be considered.

"If it comes up, we’ll look very hard at it and find out if it is really worth the savings," said board member William Arnett. "In this day and age, you have to look at everything that comes down the road."

Others said they trusted SRP management.

"I’m not there to micromanage because that is not my job," said board member Mario Herrera. "I feel very confident in the people that run these different departments."

Board member Larry Rovey said he was "not excited" about cutting jobs, but hadn’t made up his mind on the issue.

"I would expect the staff to look to economize any way we can to keep the rates low for our customers," Rovey said.

Commission Chairwoman Kris Mayes said that because SRP doesn’t have to report to her commission like other state utilities, the company faces less scrutiny over such decisions.

She would be concerned if one of the utilities under her oversight outsourced, "particularly in this down economy," she said.

The commission can influence utilities’ hiring through rate cases.

For example, when the commission approved an emergency rate increase for APS in December, commissioners directed the utility to cut at least $20 million in expenses and do it without layoffs.

"I would be very concerned about (outsourcing) at APS, TEP or UniSource (Energy Services)," Commissioner Gary Pierce said. "There would be quite a grilling over that. It would be very hard for the folks we regulate to outsource."

Pierce said he is curious if there are policies the commission or Legislature can address to eliminate the need for companies to outsource to cut costs.

"If not, and it is a significant difference in cost, I think we owe it to the ratepayers to make sure they are paying as low a cost for electricity as possible," he said. "But the savings (from outsourcing) would have to be significant."

SRP directors wouldn’t speculate on how much the company would have to save to justify outsourcing 40 to 50 jobs.

SRP has been affected by the weak economy. The company still is growing, but slowly.

As of March, SRP had nearly 40,000 fewer customers than projected, according to a report by Chief Financial Executive Mark Bonsall.

SRP reported a loss of $24 million in March alone, and reduced its planned capital expenses for the month by $22 million, according to the report.

Before offering severance packages to 99 employees this year, 83 of whom accepted, SRP cut contract workers, temps and unfilled positions.

Source: http://www.azcentral.com/arizonarepublic/business/articles/2009/05/21/20090521biz-outsource0521.html

Swan to outsource IT, back office work to Tech Mahindra

New telecom entrant Swan Telecom is set to outsource its IT and back office functions to Tech Mahindra and award a network equipment
deal to Ericsson together in a transaction worth about $250 million. The deal, the first of its kind in the telecom outsourcing sector, is aimed at bringing down operational costs and compete more effectively with incumbents such as Bharti Airtel and Reliance Communications.

"Swan has decided to retain the computer hardware part, and decided to bundle its IT and network management contract in order to avoid a high value outsourcing deal and retain many of these functions in-house," said a person familiar with the matter on conditions of anonymity.

Traditionally, telcos such as Bharti Airtel, Idea Cellular, Unitech Wireless and Aircel have outsourced their entire IT and network infrastructure to vendors as separate contracts. However, Swan plans to retain the control of its computer hardware systems, and will make Ericsson responsible for the entire network with an IT vendor working in tandem for application development, maintenance and integration work. For instance, IBM manages Bharti Airtel’s entire outsourcing of IT, back office and network management along with Nortel and Ericsson.

Officials from Emirates Telecommunications, or Etisalat, also participated in the decision making, the person added. Etisalat had acquired 45% in Swan for $900 million last year.

A senior official from one of the companies bidding for this contract confirmed on Wednesday that Tech Mahindra and Ericsson have indeed won the deal. "Swan has already finalized Ericsson as its network equipment vendor. It’s a matter of time before they announce Tech Mahindra as their tech vendor," he said.

Swan, which will have to compete with established rivals like Bharti Airtel and RCOM, aims to start lean and focus on its core telecom business. "Etisalat has adopted this strategy of bundling IT with network equipment contract in most of its greenfield projects, and India is no exception," another person familiar with the matter said.

For instance, the outsourcing contract for Etisalat’s greenfield project in Egypt, Nigeria and Tanzania were structured in a similar fashion. In fact, Tech Mahindra along with Ericsson won Etisalat’s Egypt contract in February last year.

Wipro, which won Rs 2,500 crore outsourcing contract from another new entrant Unitech Wireless last month, was also in the shortlist, but Swan decided to opt for bundling its IT and network management, equipment contract in order to avoid additional upfront costs.

When contacted by ET on Wednesday, a senior Wipro official declined to offer any specific comments. A Tech Mahindra spokesperson also declined to comment.

Ericsson and Swan Telecom had not responded to the query at the time of going to press.

Swan’s outsourcing contract, which has witnessed aggressive bidding from IBM, Wipro and Tech Mahindra, comes at a time when Tech Mahindra is attempting to establish itself in the domestic market, as part of its long-term strategy to derisk its revenues from BT.

Source: http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/Infotech/ITeS/Swan-to-outsource-IT-back-office-work-to-TechM/articleshow/4558029.cms

IBM and Ferrosan Sign Seven-Year Outsourcing Contract

IBM and Ferrosan A/S, an international consumer and healthcare company based in Denmark, today announced a seven-year strategic agreement for IBM to manage Ferrosan’s information technology (IT) infrastructure.

Ferrosan is an international consumer healthcare company developing, producing and marketing supplements and lifestyle products and medical devices. Ferrosan has approximately 800 employees and is operating in more than 70 countries — with more than 90% of its revenue generated outside Denmark.

In terms of the agreement, IBM will provide Ferrosan with a flexible solution for significant cost savings and will enable Ferrosan to continue to grow and strengthen its position in the healthcare market. The agreement includes a private cloud infrastructure for Ferrosan’s entire IT operations comprising of virtual and physical IBM Power Systems and System x servers, associated software, network, storage and back-up services. Additionally, a Software Platform Management Services solution will be included for the majority of Ferrosan’s 800 employees.

In the past, IT operations were managed separately at each Ferrosan location, which was both expensive and complicated. The IT operation has now been centralized at IBM’s Copenhagen Campus providing Ferrosan with state-of-the-art data center setup including a high level of security.

"We are very pleased to expand our collaboration with IBM. It is crucial for Ferrosan to have a solid partner manage our IT infrastructure. This agreement enables us to work closely with IBM to design the best possible solution for Ferrosan’s organization; a solution that matches our goals and priorities perfectly. The agreement also enables Ferrosan to focus on business development and value-creating solutions based on IBM’s solid IT foundation. Ferrosan looks forward to continuing the good collaboration with IBM," says Frederik Boettger, Director of IT at Ferrosan.

"Ferrosan is a global player in its field with a clear agenda for growth and IBM is well-positioned to meet their future demands," says Sven Kolstrup, Country Executive, IBM Global Technology Services, Denmark. "The flexible and scalable solution covered by this agreement will enable Ferrosan to adjust to the fast-changing demands of a competitive market."

The contract was signed in February 2009 and extends an existing outsourcing agreement signed in 2006.

Source: http://news.prnewswire.com/ViewContent.aspx?ACCT=109&STORY=/www/story/05-20-2009/0005030091&EDATE=