On the day after iconic Kannada film hero Rajkumar died, India's IT-BPO capital came to a standstill, but the contingency plans of companies have prevented any disruption in services.Close to 95% of the 3 lakh plus IT-BPO workforce in the city were forced to log into a long weekend from Thursday morning as rampaging mobs took to the streets after the death of Dr Rajkumar on Wednesday afternoon. Only skeleton staff were pressed into services at a handful of BPO firms to keep the systems and processes running for their customers across the globe. A majority of the BPO work was diverted to other cities in India. Almost the entire IT staff of software vendors stayed back home as many of them have the liberty to co-ordinate work from home unlike the staff of BPOs who often cannot work out of home because of data security reasons or unavailability of bandwidth.There were some reports of a few organisations like Microsoft and IBM on the Embassy Golf Links adjacent to the Airport Road, which were forced to closed down on Wednesday at around 5 pm. Officials at these companies said they were in close touch with the police who made adequate arrangement for staff, especially women, to reach home safely on Wednesday night. IBM is understood to have totally shut shop except for a minor portion of its BPO work. According IBM officials, a majority of the work was diverted to their Delhi centre.Infosys's IT employees did not have to turn up for work ahead of their annual results on Friday. They also didn't face any difficulties on Wednesday evening while returning home. On the other hand, a small percentage of Progeon (BPO arm of Infosys) staff had to come to work and customers were kept informed that only skeleton services would be running.A spokesperson for Infosys said that they have a business continuity plan, which was activated and no major effect was felt on their operations owing to the backup created by the contingency plan.Wipro declared a holiday on Friday. Their BPO operations don't have a presence in the city.MphasiS also has declared a holiday, and employees have opted to work on Saturday to make up for Thursday. They, too, closed down early on Wednesday. Pureplay BPO firms like 24/7Customer too had to down shutters on Thursday, making do with a few staff, and had to divert work to other centres in India.
