Cognizant ties up with Cambridge Assessment

BANGALORE, INDIA: Cognizant, a provider of IT, consulting, and business process outsourcing services, recently announced that it will provide a range of application services to Cambridge Assessment, a not-for-profit examination group owned by Cambridge University.

As part of this multi-year, multi-million-pound engagement, Cognizant will work with Cambridge Assessment and help rationalize and consolidate its portfolio of applications, and deliver application maintenance and production support services to enable the organization to improve the management and processing of examinations, said a press release.

Cambridge Assessment is made up of three exam boards - Oxford Cambridge and RSA (OCR), University of Cambridge International Examinations, and University of Cambridge ESOL Examinations (English for Speakers of Other Languages) - and plays a leading role in the research, development, and delivery of educational assessment to over 8 million learners around the world.

Cambridge Assessment engaged with Cognizant in June 2011 to consolidate application support services in its portfolio to ensure efficiencies and competitiveness in a demanding market, as well as the flexibility to continue to respond to the current and future needs of the business.

The current technology portfolio is a diverse mix of over 122 applications - using legacy, web-based, and proprietary technologies - and database applications as well as third-party packages.

Cognizant will streamline the applications to ensure the successful management of examination processing, while facilitating the move towards more cost-effective and easy-to-use technologies.

Cognizant will also help Cambridge Assessment meet its business objectives by transforming the support function from a reactive to a proactive mode.

This involves enabling alert and monitoring capabilities, improving usability and governance of in-house applications, and supporting the business during seasonal workload increases through examination periods.

“We required a partner that offers best-in-class technology services as well as the reliability, quality, maturity, and flexibility to scale according to business demand. We are confident Cognizant embodies these capabilities and has the strategic vision and ambition to help us achieve our business goals,” said Bruno Laquet, director of Group Infrastructure Services at Cambridge Assessment.