Pact will help reduce cost for clients.
R Chandrasekaran
Technology bellwether and India’s second biggest software exporter Infosys struck a deal with IPsoft wherein the two companies will partner to offer services for reducing the IT operation costs and create value for their clients.
The deal comes a few weeks after Infosys provided lower than the industry guided outlook for the current fiscal year ending March 2013. While Infosys expects revenues to grow 6 – 10 percent, industry body NASSCOM predicts 12 – 14 percent growth.
India’s biggest software exporter Tata Consultancy Services sees scope for outperforming the trade body. Following the downbeat forecast, Infosys shares tanked 20 percent in the U.S. stock exchange.
Therefore, the initiative taken by Infosys assumes significance. The alliance between Infosys and IPsoft, which is viewed as new standard, is not an exclusive tie up. However, the partnership is likely to provide a head-start for Infosys in the infrastructure management, which is considered as one of the fastest growing service sectors.
Infosys could get only 7 percent or $530 million of its $7.4 billion revenue in the fiscal year ended March, whereas its rival HCL Technologies generates about 28 percent or $1.26 billion of the total $4.5 billion revenues. This suggests that Infosys needs to pull up their socks in this space. Research organization Garnet predicts $140 billion market for IT infrastructure management by the turn of 2015.
IPsoft is expected to provide infrastructure management enabling cost savings of 30 – 40 percent through self-learning, self-healing software platform that is competent enough to provide basic infrastructure management support with a limited human involvement. The company has expertise in autonomic computing, which is referred to self-managing features of computing resources and adapting to unpredictable changes, but at the same time hide intrinsic complexity to users. Its IPcenter along with Infosys’ managed services will cut down IT operations costs.
The company’s CEO Chetan Dube said, “Autonomics-driven services can bring to IT support and maintenance the kind of productivity gains that robotics brought to the manufacturing industryâ€.
The partnership enables both the companies to collaborate for setting up an Autonomics Center of Excellence and an Autonomics Lab at the InfosysGlobalEducationCenter in Mysore. The center will train more than 5,000 Infosys employees on IPcenter platform in the ensuing months.
Commenting on the tie up, Infosys senior vice president and global head of business IT services Chandrahekar Kakal added, “We believe autonomics can help enterprises balance shrinking IT budgets and expanding demand for business enablement. We are confident that our partnership with IPsoft will help us deliver greater returns on our clients’ IT investmentsâ€.
The fact that the tie up is not exclusive indicates that others from India too can reach a similar deal with IPsoft. However, Infosys may have a head start compared to its rivals from India. The impact of this deal may not be fully reflected until probably till the September quarter. The second half of the current fiscal year could offer the impact of this deal.
To contact the author, e-mail:rchandrasekaran@americanbazaaronline.com