Infosys to set up centre in Prague

To manage remote infrastructure for its clients

Infosys is setting up a centre for remote infrastructure management services (IMS) in Prague. This centre will be the fifth for Infosys and the first outside India.

Priti Rao, VP, IMS, Infosys, said: "This business has been growing rapidly for us in the past five years and we contribute around $100 million to the total revenues of Infosys. We have around 2,000 people in this line of business and we intend to grow at 35 per cent year on year."

Infosys, currently serves 70 global clients from centres in Pune, Bangalore, Hyderabad and Chennai. The new centre in Prague will become functional by April 2006 and will employ around 50 people in a year's time. "Infosys already has a presence in Prague through Progeon and we do not have to build the centre from scratch," Rao noted.

She further added that infrastructure outsourcing is gaining ground globally and is throwing open tremendous opportunities locally.

According to independent estimates, the overall market size for IMS is between $100-$150 billion and the remote IMS market is worth $55 billion. Revenues from Indian-exported offshore infrastructure management services stand at $450 million currently.

Rao added that Infosys was not open to taking over assets of their clients and will only manage them. "This is our policy. Selectively we may be open to such deals but that will be only an exception," she added.

In a related development, Gartner on Wednesday positioned Infosys in the leader quadrant in its 2006 Magic Quadrant report for 30 leading offshore application services providers.

The report, titled 'Magic Quadrant for Offshore Application Services 2006', depicts Gartner's analysis of companies from a specific technology or service market against criteria for that marketplace. The companies are evaluated by Gartner in terms of completeness of vision and ability to execute.

"It is evident that offshore services and proof of a sound global delivery model (GDM) are increasingly necessary to deliver the cost benefits, skills and scalability of resources that clients demand," said Kris Gopalakrishnan, COO and Deputy MD, Infosys.

He added that a majority of Infosys' revenue in the last 12 months was derived from GDM-based application services.

"We are expanding our GDM to new services, expanding our network of global delivery locations, and investing in process innovation, methodologies and tools to meet the unique needs of our clients. With Infosys Consulting, we are now able to extend our GDM capabilities to combine with world-class business consulting capabilities," he further added.