Perot bullish on infrastructure solutions

Perot Systems is bullish on its infrastructure solutions business in the country and the company is also looking at India as a domestic market with its indigenously built-OPAS suite

Dan Leonard, director (infrastructure solutions) at Perot Systems, spoke to R Jai Krishna of CyberMedia News on the company’s plans to target the domestic market and establishing centers in Tier-2 cities.

Leonard who recently joined the company will be grooming the Indian infrastructure leadership team and also establish the governance of APAC infrastructure solutions services.

The company also sees Leonard’s leadership role in seamlessly integrating the India delivery centre processes and culture into the global delivery model.

CMN: What are the infrastructure operations of Perot and its contribution to the company’s overall business?

Dan Leonard: Perot Systems’ India Infrastructure Operations are a major service and delivery platform for the company’s $2.5 billion (US) global operations. We started with Infrastructure Operations in 1988, and now we one of the oldest organization in the field of providing Infrastructure related services to clients globally.

Our Infrastructure Solutions (IS) operations provide wide range of services to its clients from its India operations, such as End user computing (Service Desk, Messaging, Desk-side support, etc.), Network services (WAN and LAN support, Convergence, internet services etc.), Enterprise computing (System administration, DBA, Enterprise Command Center (ECC)), Service Management, Consulting and Project Management and Information Assurance. Overall Perot’s IS operations contribute to around 40 per cent of global revenues.

CMN: Perot had been relying on its in-house OPAS suite, can you detail us on its salient features?

DN: OPAS (Operational Processes Application Suite) is an ITIL-based integrated applications tool, providing a consistent service view and supporting our service management model in data center & other infrastructure services.

Since, OPAS is based on ITIL framework thus allowing us to be effective in managing our client’s infrastructure. It is developed and maintained by Perot Systems, thus allowing us the flexibility to customize it as per our client’s integration need into their existing toolsets. The suite is well integrated into communication gateways for telephone and paging services providing timely alerts and communications. Recently, it has been integrated with a commercial CMDB (BSM Atrium) to provide better configuration management services to clients. It is also integrated with various commercially available monitoring tools such as BMC Marimba, Netiq, etc. to generate automatic tickets based on event alerts.

OPAS also has an event consolidator, which filters multiple alerts caused by single event thus ensuring optimum ticket generation. The suite is now available and used globally by all IS associates.

CMN: What is the scope of back-end support business like infrastructure operations in India, and what are your plans?

DN: Though Perot Systems is a global company, based out of US, over 30 per cent of our workforce is located in India. We are however, growing our presence around the world so we can provide truly global solutions to our clients; recent expansion in the Philippines, Mexico, Eastern Europe a well as continued expansion here in India both at our existing locations as well as new cities.

We are a top tier Outsourcing Company and India is an integral part of our delivery model and has been for 10 years. Most recently we integrated IS into the remote delivery model out of India and today we serve more than 70+ plus customers for IS from India within one year.

We will enter the Indian domestic market as the market is growing and the time is right. We will do so in the HC and Hospitality (Travel, Leisure and consumers) space. We will bring world class outsourcing capability and solutions to the domestic market. In India we are aggressively moving into Tier II cities such as Coimbatore and will continue to be a strong PSC delivery platform outside of India. We recently invested to set up a world class "enterprise command center" ECC in Noida were we perform network and security operations, and we will continue to invest in India.