HCL Tech wins 5-yr News Corp contract

LONDON: IT services firm HCL Technologies Ltd (HCL), today announced that it has entered into a multi million pounds, five year technology Infrastructure Management and Transformation engagement with News International, a UK subsidiary of News Corporation, the world’s leading diversified global media company.

HCL would be responsible for managing News International’s datacenter and network environments along with strategically transforming them, said a press release.

This would involve transformation projects such as migrating operating systems to lower cost industry standard solutions, business continuity improvements and virtualization, consolidation and standardization of storage and servers.

HCLT said it is already successfully working with other News Corporation companies for their technology Infrastructure Management requirements.

“We see the benefit of working with the same global partners across News Corp,” said Andrew Hickey, CIO of News International and a member of News Corp’s CIO Council. “We saw the good work HCL had undertaken with other News Corporation companies and wanted to use their expertise for our company too. I believe that longer term, technology cost optimization, after standardization, will be driven by shared tenancy models and this deal positions us to take advantage of this model in the medium term” he continued.

“We will leverage our experience in transforming the IT operations landscape of hundreds of global enterprise and our globally benchmarked best practices in Infrastructure Management to add exponential value to News International,” said Pradeep Bindal, senior vice president and Worldwide Head of Sales for Infrastructure Management & Transformation Services, HCL Technologies Infrastructure Services Division.

He added that they are confident of providing efficient operations, reduction in ongoing opex and capex and IT Operations best practices to News International over the tenure of this engagement.

“We're delighted to have this opportunity to partner with News International,” said Sanjeev Nikore, President, Strategic Verticals, HCL Technologies.

“Media and Entertainment companies face increasing global competition and rising cost pressures. HCL’s value proposition for this industry offers an avenue to differentiate and build competitive advantage with reduced costs. We look forward to applying our technological and industry expertise to support News International's business goals,” he added.

HCL was recently ranked as the World’s No.1 IT Infrastructure Services Provider by the Blackbook of Outsourcings Survey for 2009.