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30 Minute Interview
Full-fledged RIM comes of age
Anant Gupta, COO, HCL Technologies Infrastructure
Services Division talks to Faiz Askari about the Remote Infrastructure
Management market in India and abroad.
Anant Gupta |
The global RIM market and HCL’s role in it
Research from McKinsey, Morgan Stanley and Forrester has repeatedly
shown increasing demand by Fortune/Global 500 enterprises for RIM. A recent
report from Forrester said that this year 45 percent of CIOs in Europe plan
to offshore RIM as compared to 41 percent for custom software development (from
Europe’s Offshore Satisfaction Levels Pass The Test, September 2005). Verticals
like BFSI, pharma, hi-tech and manufacturing are employing RIM as a strategy
to effectively address their need for premium IT Infrastructure performance
and optimization.
HCL Technologies Infrastructure Services Division (HCL ISD) recorded revenues
of Rs. 503 crores in the fiscal 2005-06 and has been growing at an aggressive
rate (64 percent YoY in the last quarter) in the global RIM space. Overall,
we contribute 12 percent of HCL Technologies’ revenue.
We were recently cited as a leader in Global Delivery of Infrastructure Management
in Europe by Forrester and a leader in domestic RIM by Frost & Sullivan.
We have also we have also put together a ‘Blackbook on RIM’, a primer
for getting up-to-speed with the various facets of this Industry, which was
released by Kiran Karnik, President, NASSCOM during the India Leadership Conclave
in Mumbai.
RIM from a technological standpoint
RIM offers many benefits to its practitioners; it has helped many large global
corporations in effectively optimising their IT infrastructure and related operations.
RIM has delivered ever-improving service levels to meet and exceed the expectations
of their business-users without compromising on quality and security. Another
key point is that RIM has a core focus on the client’s core competencies
leading to greater business efficiency. RIM can facilitate risk mitigation,
increase coverage to 24x7, offer flexibility in engagement and transformational
benefits like infrastructure optimisation, standardisation and consolidation,
process and tools re-engineering etc.
Trends observed in 2006
Globally, the key trends that were observed in IMS last year
were integrated multi-service management deals gained traction; transformational
benefits of IMS from companies like HCL made existing clients move up the value
scale and lastly, the shift from large incumbent service providers to specialised
vendors that offer greater flexibility in the IMS engagement.
Integrated multi-service management deals are executed through
a unified structure that is responsible for the management and performance of
IT infrastructure as well as applications. This integration not only reduces
the response time for any kind of incidence, but also provides an aligned end-user
experience to the client. All the large deals that were outsourced to India
last year like DSGi and Skandia were integrated multi-service engagements.
Today Indian enterprises are looking at the full outsourcing
model of RIM where they hand over the management all the components of their
IT Infrastructure to a single service provider. In addition, scopes of engagements
are expanding with more components of the IT ecosystem getting outsourced like
data lifecycle management, managed BCP services etc, therefore maximising the
cost and efficiency benefits.
RIM futures
We see more global enterprises seeking transformational benefits from their
existing outsourcing partners. Also the sheer number of such offshoring deals
will see a rise with a number of large engagements coming up for renewal in
the next two years.
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