Datacert Appoints Shanmugam Nagappan to Head its Expanding Asia-Pacific Operation

Australasia News

28
Oct
2013

Editor

Appointment coincides with the opening of a new, larger facility in Chennai, India to house growing workforce

Datacert, Inc., the premier global provider of enterprise legal management solutions, announced today that it has appointed Shanmugam Nagappan as Senior Vice President and Managing Director, India. Based at Datacert’s Asia-Pacific headquarters in Chennai, India, Nagappan is tasked with managing all operations in the region and supporting the growth of Datacert’s overall business in Asia-Pacific.

This appointment coincides with the opening of a new, 16,000+ square-foot facility in Chennai to house the company's growing staff of software developers and customer support specialists in the region.

Nagappan brings to Datacert over 18 years of experience in enterprise software implementations and IT consulting, including 15 years successfully deploying the offshore delivery model. At the helm of Datacert's India operations, which were established in 2009, Nagappan leads a large and growing team of more than 100 technical employees. The team provides software development and quality assurance services for product development and client implementations, as well as technical support to enable 24x7 global support for Datacert corporate clients and their networks of legal service providers.

"Shanmugam brings extensive operational, IT, and offshore services management expertise to running Datacert's India operations, which provide us with cost-effective development scalability and global support capabilities. This is a tremendous advantage over our much smaller competitors that don’t have global infrastructure," said Jim Tallman, president and chief executive officer, Datacert. "These operations are not only instrumental to supporting our clients in North America and EMEA (Europe, Middle East, and Africa), but they serve to accelerate our Asia-Pacific business development plans. This is why we have invested significantly this year to open new, much larger facilities in Chennai. We will be increasing our India workforce by approximately 50% in 2014 and we want to ensure that we can continue to attract and retain the top talent in the region."

Prior to joining Datacert, Nagappan held various senior management positions. Most recently Nagappan was Managing Director for Pride Technologies where he established and grew the company's Global Shared Services Center. Prior to that, he served as Global CIO for Software Spectrum and Senior Vice President of IT for Insight, a Fortune 500 IT solutions provider. He also held senior management roles with KPMG in the US and India where he advised multinational clients on their India sourcing strategies, oversaw large ERP implementations for Fortune 500 companies, and instituted continuous process improvement initiatives to streamline delivery of client projects.

Datacert’s new India facility is 16,000+ square feet, located within the Ramanujan IT City SEZ at TRIL Infopark in Chennai. Spread over more than 25 acres, Ramanujan IT City is strategically located at the heart of Chennai’s southern business district at Taramani, which is the gateway to Chennai's rapidly-developing IT corridor. Ramanujan IT City has been designed by world-renowned US architects SOM, Skidmore Owings & Merrill, constructed by Leighton of Australia, and has obtained the Green Building Certification as per the LEED Gold guidelines. The new facility will service both new client acquisitions and the expansion of existing operations in the areas of product development, professional services, and customer support. James Calaway, chairman of Datacert’s board of directors, inaugurated the new facility at the opening ceremony, which was held on October 28.