Exigen Services
Exigen Services is a San Francisco-based application outsourcing company operating development centers in Russia, the Baltic States, Ukraine, Belarus, China, and Australia. The company provides software development, systems integration, quality assurance, and maintenance services to customers around the world, including T-Mobile, Eniro, Hugin Group, Hollard Group, ACE Group and Julius Baer Group.
The company maintains offices in 13 countries, serving clients in the financial, telecommunications, insurance, media, technology, and government sectors.
History
Exigen Group was founded in 1999 by Alec Miloslavsky and Greg Shenkman with the goal of developing Business Process Utilities (BPU), more specifically, business process automation solutions for the insurance and financial services industries. Over the years, Exigen demonstrated stable growth and expansion to other markets, acquiring IT companies along the way, including SoftwareHouse (SWH)[1], a high-tech research and development firm located in Riga, Latvia; and DATI[2], the largest systems development organization in the Baltic States.
In 2006, Exigen Services was spun off to form a separate company providing application development services, while Exigen Group continued its focus on BPU development.
In 2007, Exigen Services merged with StarSoft Developments Labs, an application outsourcing provider specializing in Agile application development with delivery centers in Russia and other CIS countries.
In 2009, Exigen Services acquired China-based software outsourcing company, Taihoo Technology [3].
The ranking in the 2009 Inc. 5000[4] was assured by Exigen Services’ commitment to steady growth, with the company recording a three-year revenue growth from 2005-to-2008 of more than 255 percent, and maintaining a year-on-year compound annual growth rate (CAGR) above 35 percent.
The company also achieved Inc. 5000[5] rankings among the top 50 fastest-growing companies in the San Francisco area, and the top 100 largest companies by employee numbers. During the same period evaluated by the Inc. 5000, Exigen Services achieved a number of other recognitions for leadership in the application outsourcing industry, including the #1 ranking for software testing and quality assurance services in outsourcing in the 2008 Brown & Wilson Black Book of Outsourcing [6]. The company was also listed on the Global Services 100 [7] and the International Association of Outsourcing Professionals’ (IAOP) Global Outsourcing 100 [8] for multiple years between 2005 and 2008. Exigen Services has been also named one of top 100 innovative service providers in the world as part of the annual Global Services 100 ranking organized by Global Services magazine and the management consulting firm neoIT [9]
Geography
Headquartered in San Francisco, Exigen Services maintains sales offices in New York, London, Frankfurt, Brussels, Copenhagen, Stockholm, Moscow, Riga, and Vilnius.
The company operates 10 delivery centers, located in the following cities:
Controversy
The leadership of the company has been subject to multiple lawsuits. The web-site Gawker labeled Greg Shenkman as a "Sexual Predator" [[17]] in reference to a suit filed by a former assistant. The suit alleged that he "used work visas to import an Eastern European woman as a sexual plaything".
Shenkman was also sued separately in San Francisco and San Mateo county by former employees alleging improper termination.
Technologies and methodologies
Technologies used in Exigen Services’ projects include the following:
- Java EE is a core technology in many of the company’s implemented projects.
- Microsoft technologies play a significant role in many projects, and company affiliates in Russia and the Baltics are Microsoft Gold Certified Partners.
- Document management, human resources, and many other solutions have been developed on the basis of IBM Lotus Notes/Domino technologies, and the company is an IBM Business Partner.
- .NET[10]-based projects play a considerable role in the Exigen Services portfolio.
- Many Exigen Services projects have been based on Exigen technologies, including Exigen VisiFLOW, Exigen Workflow, Exigen Process Backbone, and Exigen Insurance Process Backbone.
- In the Baltic States, development teams include mainframe specialists familiar with Assembler, Cobol, FORTRAN, and PL/1.
- In China, special areas of expertise include mobile system development for the following platforms: iPhone, BlackBerry, Windows Mobile, Android, and Symbian; Oracle PLM consulting; web conference systems, including products such as WebEx and GoToMeeting; and web application development based on PHP, Ruby on Rails, and Adobe Flex/AS/Flash.
In terms of methodology, Exigen Services has been using distributed Agile methods, including Scrum, for systems development since 2002. Dr. Jeff Sutherland, an author of the Agile Manifesto and one of the co-inventors of Scrum, has recognized the expertise of Exigen Services in global distributed team management for large-scale Agile projects[11][12].
In its Flex-Agility package, Exigen Services combines Agile-based software development with a fixed price services package. This allows requirement changes to be introduced during the project without impacting the original schedule or budget.
In terms of testing expertise, Exigen Services has more than 250 dedicated quality engineers, many of whom have certifications from well-respected authorities such as the International Software Testing Qualifications Board (ISTQB).
Industrial Expertise
- Insurance. Exigen Services and its partner, Exigen Insurance Solutions, have worked closely on several joint projects for the insurance industry. The basic technologies used in these projects are owned by Exigen Insurance Solutions. One of them is Exigen Insurance Process Backbone ,which supports the automation of most core business processes of insurance companies. The new generation of Exigen Insurance Process Backbone is named Exigen Suite, and includes components such as PolicyCore and ClaimCore.
- Government. The company now known as Exigen Services has been providing software development and maintenance services to governmental institutions for nearly 20 years. In 1990, the founders of what is today Exigen Services Latvia started work on their first international project, the Artists Social Insurance System for a German government agency (Landesversicherungsanstalt Oldenburg/Bremen). In recent years, projects have been executed for numerous government clients in Latvia, including the Latvian Parliament, the Treasury of the Republic of Latvia, the Latvian State Revenue Service, the Latvian Postal Service, and the Riga City Council. Government sector clients in other countries have included the Ministry of Economy and Planning in Saudi Arabia and the Ministry of Labor and Taxes of Denmark (in joint projects with CSC).
- Financial. Exigen Services counts many banks among its customers. For example, in Latvia, the company developed a Data Warehouse System for Mortgage bank (Hipoteku banka). Other customer in the financial services sector is SEB.
- Telecom. T-Mobile has been a client of Exigen Services (formerly StarSoft) since 2004. Exigen Services runs an Offshore Development Center, employing an average of 160 employees, for T-Mobile projects. Other Exigen customers in the telecommunications field include Bell Aliant and Tele2 Latvia.
- Media. In 2004, two major record labels founded a joint venture with Exigen aimed at the development of a Shared Royalty Platform, a system for automatic calculation of the royalties, i.e., payments allocated to artists, producers and publishers for each purchase or view of copyrighted materials. Exigen Services provided its expertise in the development of this solution.
- Healthcare. One of the oldest clients of Exigen Services (formerly StarSoft) is a Danish affiliate of CSC. LABKA II, a joint project of Exigen Services and Computer Sciences Corporation since 2001, developed a complex laboratory information system for automatic collection of clinical analyses aimed to meet the demands of hospitals and clinical laboratories. The LABKA II system has been in use since 2007.
- Another example of a medical project is a partnership with Sesame Communications for the creation of an online communications solution for dental and orthodontic offices.
- High tech. Like many Eastern European application outsourcing vendors, Exigen Services has a number of clients in the high tech industry. Among them there are Sun Microsystems[13], Intel[14]; Macromedia (Adobe)[15] and Omniture.
- Logistics/warehouse. In 1999-2003, Exigen Services, together with Berghof[16], executed a series of projects for end customers such as Adidas, Schreyer, Busch-Jäger, etc.
References
- ^ [1] Latvian software brains plus American financial muscle, NewNations, Nov 26 2002
- ^ [2] Latvian software brains plus American financial muscle, NewNations, Nov 26 2002
- ^ [3] Exigen Services Acquires Chinese Software Outsourcer, Market Wire, May 2009
- ^ [4] INC.5000
- ^ [5] INC.5000
- ^ [6] Black Book of Outsourcing
- ^ [7] The 2009 Global Services 100 Companies
- ^ [8] International Association of Outsourcing Professionals' 2009 (IAOP)
- ^ [9] Global Services 100 Companies
- ^ [10] IT Consulting Company Develops Photo Kiosk in Just Six Months with New Software Platform
- ^ [11] StarSoft won its first Agile customer in 2002, a Fortune 50 computer equipment manufacturer
- ^ [12] Distributed Scrum: Agile Project Management with Outsourced Development Teams
- ^ [13] Sun Signs Exigen Outsourcing Deal
- ^ [14] Star Software developed MoMax for Intel
- ^ [15] Macromedia: PowerPoint-to-Flash Converter
- ^ [16] Best Practices in Logistics Automation
External links