Software company sets sights on China

Firm is relaunching with former Keane executive at the helm

Brian Keane is CEO of Dextrys.

Brian T. Keane, who departed Boston technology services firm Keane Inc. under a cloud two years ago, has resurfaced as chief executive of a private-equity-backed Wakefield company focused on outsourcing software applications and services to China.

The company, which is set to relaunch today under the name Dextrys, seeks to become the leader in a fragmented Chinese technology services market that's poised for rapid growth.

Dextrys's motto will be "Making China Easy" for US companies farming out software and services operations. Research firm Gartner Inc. estimates that the market in China will be $6.1 billion in revenue this year and projects it will nearly double to $12 billion by 2012.

"This market is just in its infancy," Keane, 46, said in an interview yesterday. "Today about 80 or 85 percent of the world's outsourcing is going to India. But a lot of companies feel they're overexposed there. China is the new frontier of opportunity. And many companies recognize that they have to have a China strategy."

With wage inflation, employee turnover, and the rise of the Indian rupee against the dollar, "India fatigue" is taking hold, said Keane, whose former company had a strong presence in India.

He said China today provides software application and product engineering services about 10 to 20 percent cheaper on average than India. And companies buying technology services in China, where the government is providing subsidies to service providers, often can gain a foothold to sell their own products there, he suggested.

Keane resigned from the company bearing his family's name on May 10, 2006, after a pair of female employees accused him of harassment. He denied the allegations. But the company paid $1.14 million to settle one complaint and an undisclosed sum to settle the other. Keane Inc. last spring was acquired for $854 million by Caritor Inc., based in San Ramon, Calif., which then took the Keane name.

Over the past two years, Brian Keane said, he has spent time with his family, worked for the Advent International buyout firm, and begun investigating the Chinese technology services market.

Last year, he joined San Francisco private equity firm Francisco Partners to take a controlling interest in Wakefield's DarwinSuzsoft, with Francisco investing $48 million and Keane putting up $3 million. DarwinSuzsoft was formed when Darwin Partners of Wakefield bought Suzsoft of China in 2006. Darwin founder Al Perkins and Suzsoft founder James Tong are minority partners in Dextrys, and Tong serves as its president of Asia operations.

Dextrys has about 1,400 employees - 200 in Massachusetts, another 200 in San Francisco and Atlanta, and the rest in China. Its management team in Wakefield includes 10 veterans of Keane Inc.

Allie Young, a Gartner research vice president in Billerica, said China has been seeking to expand from electronics and parts manufacturing into technology services and is attracting investment from the Chinese government as well as US and Indian businesses. "China has a lot of promise," Young said. "But it's going to take a few years to mature, not only in language capabilities but in having a skilled and experienced workforce in software and services."

Trimble Mobile Solutions, a Cambridge company that sells software and hardware for mobile workers, is doing product development work in China through Dextrys. "We have a lot of clients in the region," said Mark Botticelli, the Trimble vice president of engineering. "And there's just more available skilled labor in China than India."

Robert Weisman can be reached at weisman@globe.com.