Source:www.thehindubusinessline.com

HCL Technologies Ltd has announced that it has entered into a multi-year, multi-regional contract with Hercules Inc, a US manufacturer and marketer of specialty chemicals.

The scale of engagement includes end-to-end IT infrastructure management across datacenter, network, IT security, desktop and helpdesk services.

HCL has already completed the first phase of transitioning certain IT operations and is currently managing the majority of live operations of Hercules’s IT infrastructure in the US.

The transition of additional infrastructure support in Europe will be completed within a month. Following the transition period, the collaborative co-sourcing arrangement is planned to comprise approximately 60 per cent offshore and 40 per cent on-site w ork distribution to help ensure 24×7 availability of Hercules’s IT operations.

Mr Anant Gupta, COO of HCL Technologies (Infrastructure Service Division), said: “We are excited about the value we can jointly create in this relationship and are committed towards enabling Hercules to further accelerate its business growth.”

Hercules, established in 1912, produces and markets chemicals used in making a variety of products for home, office and industrial markets.

The company has 13 R&D laboratories and 33 major plants strategically located throughout the world. - Our Bureau

Source:www.ovum.com

Under the agreement expected to close by the beginning of December 2007, 235 employees located in Munich and Berlin will move to IBM. The activities transferred bring expertise in next generation voice and multimedia, mobile Internet connections, VoIP and technical support.

Comment: The Nokia Siemens Network series of contracts and asset sales continues after those with TietoEnator and Devoteam in Finland and Belgium, respectively, earlier this month. This time again, the client will keep internal key strategic activities such as project management, architecture design and system level testing. The contract lies somewhere between an outsourcing deal and acquisition: IBM has negotiated a five-year commitment from the client but will be selling the expertise of its new teams to other clients.

A player such as IBM - and Devoteam - does not immediately come to mind when it comes to R&D services in the telecom sector. Nevertheless, the announcement should not come as a surprise. IBM has launched several R&D services initiative in the past 2 years including a management consulting service to R&D executives, its OnDemand Innovation Services research unit and in this case, IBM Global Engineering Solutions (GES).

GES is the new name for Technology Collaborative Solutions and is part of IBM’s Systems & Technology Group (STG). GES groups IBM’s semiconductor business and related manufacturing plants, hardware sold to telecoms equipment manufacturers, and Engineering & Technology Services (E&TS). What is E&TS? Once upon a time, the micro-conductor industry was undergoing major changes and evolving towards a commodity market. Four years ago, IBM decided to use the skills of its electrical engineers and specialists for outside customers. E&TS was born, reinventing the trend that in high tech, eventually, manufacturers from the western world move into services. GES remains very close to its hardware (and OEM) background, particularly in relation to semi-conductors. However, the organisation also highlights its capabilities around embedded software across industries and embedded systems for medical equipment.

R&D services in telecoms remain a very competitive market these days with a lot of emphasis on offshore. Nokia Siemens Network is reducing it headcount in R&D in high-cost countries and redeploying them in India and China to both address the local markets and be used as offshore resources. Outside of telecoms though, the acceptance of offshore is rising in R&D services, today driven in Europe by Airbus and the main automotive manufacturers. With networks and communication taking an expanding role in those industries, we can expect a shift in the industry towards offshore in the next five years.