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HCL bags 5-year services contract from Microsoft
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HCL bags 5-year services contract from Microsoft
Top Indian outsourcing cos
HCL has become a strategic vendor for providing technology services to the Redmond-headquartered firm for its online services business, according to a person familiar with the negotiations. This is the third major contract bagged by HCL in the last few weeks.
In reply to an e-mail questionnaire, an HCL spokeswoman said the company doesn’t comment on speculations. CEO Vineet Nayar was unavailable for comment.
It’s learnt that HCL will deploy 600 employees on the Microsoft contract. About 250 employees have already started working on the project. The company will also assign staff on its bench, or the buffer staff kept for new projects or ramp-ups of existing contracts, to cater to Microsoft. It could also hire more people for it.
Microsoft has been expanding the scope of its online services business. It recently announced that it will make its Business Productivity Online Suite, part of its online services, available for trial and purchase in 19 countries. Such offerings, classified under software-as-a-service, are more cost-effective, compared to traditional desktop-based services, as companies don’t have to spend on deploying and operating them.
For HCL, the deal with Microsoft means another win in a series of new deals this year. It recently announced bagging a seven-year, $350-million total IT services outsourcing contract from media firm The Readers’ Digest Association (RDA). Under the deal, the Indian IT firm will provide applications development and maintenance (ADM) services and infrastructure support to the New York-headquartered publisher of the Readers’ Digest.
HCL also signed a Rs 393-crore end-to-end IT services outsourcing deal with general insurance firm National Insurance Company recently. The string of new deals shows that Indian outsourcing service providers
, such as HCL Technologies, continue to find opportunities for business despite global economic slowdown and the disclosure of a large-scale financial fraud at Indian IT firm Satyam Computer Services.
As per research firm Gartner’s forecast, the global IT services market will decline 1.7% in calendar 2009 to $796 billion. Similarly, Forrester Research said in its latest report that IT outsourcing will remain weak in the first half of 2009, with revenues starting to improve in the second half of 2009. It said growth in 2009 will be small but positive at 2.1%.
Source:
http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/Infotech/HCL-bags-contract-from-Microsoft/ar
