Infosys ties up with Microsoft, Hitachi, Huawei

Infosys on Thursday said it had widened collaboration with Microsoft and Hitachi Data Systems, in line with chief executive Vishal Sikka's vision to strengthen software offerings and expand global alliances.

These partnerships will help India's second largest information technology (IT) services company to improve offerings in new technology areas like cloud computing, big data and analytics, and also in communication and infrastructure and data centre transformation solutions.

The Bangalore-based company has also entered into a global pact with Chinese multinational Huawei to offer cloud, big data and communication solutions to enterprise customers. The two firms will explore setting up a joint lab in China.

A recent survey by US-based HfS Research and KPMG showed clients perceived Infosys as strong in delivery but lacking innovation, hinting if its areas of execution became less significant, customers might switch.

While Infosys has been a system integration partner for Microsoft for a decade, the partnership has been widened to analytics and other technology areas. Infosys will also set up a centre for Microsoft Azure Machine Learning which will train over 1,000 engineers by March 2015.

“Our partnership with Microsoft will allow us to tap the versatility of the Microsoft Azure platform, including Azure Machine Learning and other services, to offer enterprises simplified predictive modeling tools that turn data into insights,” Vishnu Bhat, senior vice-president and global head of cloud computing at Infosys said. “This collaboration offers enterprises easy access to an analytics platform without the need for big investments and extended time-to-market,” he added.

The expanded partnership with Hitachi Data Systems will add to Infosys’ infrastructure and data centre transformation solution capabilities. The new solutions will facilitate transition of clients' IT infrastructure to cloud-based environments and will be tailored to meet the refresh cycles of enterprise data centres.

Infosys also said it would set up a centre to co-create pay-per-use solutions with Hitachi Data Systems.

“Growing our partnership with Hitachi Data Systems will enable us to bring together our complementary capabilities around cloud and big data to help our customers enhance their IT infrastructure with new technology solutions,” said U B Pravin Rao, chief operating officer at Infosys.

“Infosys and Hitachi Data Systems will help enterprises implement infrastructure and data centre solutions faster, and at lower costs,” he added. Under the partnership with Huawei, the two companies will jointly develop IT solutions that combine Huawei's cloud infrastructure and Infosys' IT services expertise. The solutions developed under this partnership will target enterprise customers looking to modernise their operations by leveraging cloud infrastructure.

“Infosys is focused on helping customers succeed with software and services to grow their business in new ways and to achieve operational efficiencies,” said Sikka.

“We are really excited to partner with Huawei to bring the power of Huawei’s cloud infrastructure and communication technologies to our joint customers, so that they can efficiently achieve this dual objective,” he added.