As the Coronavirus pandemic tightens its grip over the world, Infosys has announced a long-term contract with a billion dollar Germany chemicals maker to provide a managed workspace solution for its 14,300 employees in 33 countries.
“Infosys will setup an end-user centric modern workplace with globally standardized device/workplace landscape (for Office, Functional and Virtual users) based on a Device as a Service (DaaS) construct, backed with NextGen unified communication and collaboration platforms. The global workforce of LANXESS will be supported by a multi-lingual artificial intelligence powered service desk operating from Europe and India,” the Indian company said.
The contract with the 6.8 billion euro company is significant because of the timing.
Globally, companies are being forced to allow their employees to work from their homes on their laptops and desktops — increasing the risk of miscreants hacking into these devices and getting hold of the company’s data. Companies are also worried about the privacy and security of their data on employee devices.
The new method of remote working has also made it a challenge for employees to collaborate as efficiently as they used to when they were sitting in the same office.
Companies like Infosys and TCS have an advantage over regular video conferencing and collaboration tools providers such as Google, CISCO and Microsoft in that they can offer virtually everything a company needs to take its office online, including hardware and connectivity.
In this case for example, Infosys’ ‘device as a service’ service would mean that Infosys will be in full charge of ensuring that the employees’ end device is secure, operational and connected to the company’s infrastructure.
Kai Finke, CIO of LANXESS pointed out that implementing a standardized workplace solution will increase his company’s flexibility and scalability.
“Working with Infosys will allow us to implement state-of-the-art-technologies faster and thus bring LANXESS to the next level regarding workplace services enhancing our collaboration and mobility capabilities,” he said.
Y2K?
If the Coronavirus pandemic drags on, it could emerge as a Y2K-like opportunity for Indian IT services providers like Infosys and TCS.
These IT services providers, who have thousands of global corporations in their client lists, are singularly well placed to provide such solutions to their clients due to their long-term engagement with them.
Many of them already manage all their office IT infrastructure, such as desktops, servers, networks, printers and so on, and it would be easier for them to migrate their offices online than for a new player.
While such a shift could affect IT outsourcing companies’ revenue generated from traditional ‘Infrastructure Services’, remote working solutions offer a far greater scope for these companies to provide more sophisticated solutions such as online meeting tools, online design tools and so on.