Behind the Scenes

The early reporting on the Satyam debacle seems to do little more than recast the founder's letter, followed by the requisite hand wringing. PWC is studying the situation, which is not very comforting. I'm sure that their attorneys have encouraged them not to be forthcoming in the press, which is also disappointing.

Press reports suggest that several Fortune 500 companies have engaged Satyam to run their "back offices," whatever that means. So, one would guess that for SOX compliance on IT general controls and enterprise level controls, these Fortune 500 companies probably relied on SAS 70 reports produced by Satyam. It would seem as if the IT czars at these same companies must now be scrambling to figure out if they can continue to rely on these reports.

The likelihood of companies like Nissan and Cisco standing pat on Satyam seems very small, unless the remnants were picked up by a larger, stronger competitor. However, if you were the CIO at Nissan, could you automatically feel comfortable with Wipro? It would seem like a great opportunity for one of the global big guns, like CapGemini, Bearing Point, or others to pick up some additional revenue at these big accounts. Nobody is showing their cards at this point. Stay tuned.