India Scores More Big Outsourcing Contracts

For starters, Microsoft continued its push offshore in a deal with Wipro Technologies, in which Wipro will provide global legal process outsourcing services for Microsoft’s intellectual property portfolio. The deal is being described as a partnership in which the two will jointly develop “improved domain expertise and processes to further streamline IP processes,” whatever that means. No financial details were disclosed.

You may remember that in April, Microsoft said it was outsourcing all its internal IT support to Infosys. Under terms of the three-year deal, Infosys will manage the internal IT services for Microsoft worldwide, including IT help desk, desktop management, and infrastructure and application support, from multiple Infosys centers. The deal covers applications, devices, and databases in 450 Microsoft locations across104 countries.

Meanwhile, Singapore Exchange Ltd., which operates Singapore’s derivatives and securities exchange, inked a five-year-deal with HCL Technologies Ltd. worth about $79 million. HCL will provide SGX with infrastructure support and management services as part of the exchange’s so-called Reach initiative, an approximately $179 million initiative to create the world’s fasted trading engine capable of executing transactions in 90 microseconds. The initiative also includes a new, state-of-the-art data center with co-location facilities. For what it’s worth, HCL will leverage its regional Singapore delivery center to support this contract, which according to HCL has 700 employees.

And then there’s Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) which said it has signed a multi-year outsourcing contract with Telenor Norway, a provider of mobile communications services to customers in 13 markets across Asia and Europe and a provider of fixed-line and media services to the Scandinavian countries. Financial details weren’t disclosed, but under the contract, TCS will help Telenor Norway with application maintenance and development services and work with the company to update its application portfolio across fixed, mobile, data warehouse and accounting system domains.

So it appears India continues to be the hotbed of IT outsourcing deals. Even non-Indian companies are landing business on Indian soil. Accenture has been awarded a six-year deal with the North American operations of Henkel (a German company), which makes such brands as Dial soap and Purex laundry detergent. Again, no financial terms were disclosed, but Accenture will provide management services for the local applications and related project services of Henkel's North American business. The technologies covered by the program will include Oracle, Lotus Notes, Electronic Data Interchange, IBM AS/400 and Web applications. Accenture will deliver the services from both North America and one of its centers in Bangalore, India.

And finally, Quippo-WTTIL signed a five-year, multi-million-dollar outsourcing contract to IBM to overhaul its technology infrastructure, including the management of hardware, email and software applications. Quippo-WTTIL provides services and rents towers to major telecom operators in India. Also as part of the deal, IBM will deploy server and storage support, networking and security services at Quippo-WTTIL's hosted data centre in northern India. IBM’s Integrated Technology Services group for IBM India/South Asia is managing the deal.