Microsoft’s internal IT services have been outsourced to
India-based Infosys, which plans on providing the company with help desk,
desk-side services, and infrastructure and application support through multiple
centers worldwide.
"Infosys demonstrated that it understood our transformational
goals by introducing a flexible and innovative end-to-end approach to manage
our support infrastructure," Jim BuBois, general manager of Service Management
for Microsoft, wrote in an April 13 e-mail for eWEEK. "The fully integrated
solution developed by Infosys, combined with process compliance, a robust tool
platform and the creation of a Service Excellence Office will help us enhance
how we deliver end-user computing services to our internal employees and
partners while leveraging the innovation and investments we make in developing
new technologies."
In addition, Infosys will also establish a dedicated Service
Excellence Office to assist Microsoft in implementing ISO 20000 and ITSM
Processes, on top of managing IT services for Microsoft’s applications, devices
and databases in 450 locations across 104 countries. Infosys’s partnership with
Unisys will provide global support via the latter’s multilanguage service desk
and desk-side support. A
Times of India article on April 14 stated that the agreement could be worth
more than $100 million to Infosys.
In an April 13 statement, Infosys suggested that the knowledge
of Microsoft technologies learned in the course of the agreement would allow it
to service other customers using those same technologies.
"Our landmark agreement with Microsoft based on a unified IT
Service Management roadmap will result in moving towards a service oriented
organization along with improvement in quality of existing and new services,"
Anand Nataraj, vice president and unit head of Infosys’s Infrastructure
Management Services, was quoted as saying in that statement.
Microsoft has engaged in an aggressive cost-cutting regimen
over the past year, with a 5,000-employee-layoff cycle in 2009 paired with
eliminations of legacy products and research projects. While the company has
enjoyed something of a sales uptick in recent months, with its Windows 7
operating system selling some 90 million licenses since its October 2009
release, the
company is still waiting to see an uptick in business-oriented spending.
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