Client activity is steady and strong: Salil Parekh

The intensity of dealing with clients has gone up in the past few months as more client engagements are happening on video platforms, Salil Parekh, CEO and managing director of Infosys, said at an open house media interaction on Tuesday.

“The momentum is steady and strong,” Parekh said, highlighting the role of Covid-19 in compressing decision-making time among enterprises. “Clients remain optimistic and confident. While most (deals) are renewals, many of them are large digital transformation programmes.”

Modernisation of existing infrastructure and IT systems are driving growth among enterprises, Parekh said. “It’s not just for process improvements or cost efficiencies. The modernisation is also impacting how they are connecting with their end customers. So, there is a tremendous appetite for investment.”

The increased adoption of digital post-pandemic has resulted in technology spending remaining extremely strong. Earlier in the day, Infosys demonstrated how it has integrated multiple platforms and partnerships in a virtual marketplace. It showcased Cobalt, an enterprise marketplace for cloud platforms and partnerships, CyberNext for cyber-security, and Wingspan for re-skilling and training its 240,000 employees.

As enterprises increasingly rely on cloud to become market-responsive, most of them are also using cloud-based solutions for remote-working (or work from home) models. “They are rapidly taking multiple applications to cloud, and leveraging multiple clouds because there is no one cloud solution to fix all their needs,” explained Saju Sankarankutty, Infosys vice president for hybrid cloud, engineering, platforms and automation, service R&D. This is the market opportunity for tier-1 service providers who have a large pipeline of customers.

“Enterprises want flexibility and freedom when it comes to best-of-breed cloud offerings without worrying about multiple vendors,” he added. As a result, an online marketplace helps clients choose from catalogues of different providers, and integrate it in an existing infrastructure. Infosys is taking this marketplace—Cobalt—to customers. “With multi-cloud, governance is also challenging because compliance standards vary across providers,” Sankarankutty said.

While Cobalt was introduced in October 2020, Wingspan went live in September 2018, and CyberNext in October 2019. “The investments (Infosys) made three years ago allow us to be more relevant for our clients,” Parekh said. “Cobalt is one method by which cloud work is accelerating with our clients,” he added.

Similarly, creating the infrastructure and ability to work from home has given Infosys employees the flexibility to work from different locations at different times, Parekh said.

The open house Infosys Media Day began with Infosys chairman Nandan Nilekani’s address. “Historically, large enterprises had legacy systems that were around for decades, whereas the new world requires more agile infrastructure—microservices, services on the cloud, and so on,” he said. 

“This is a huge challenge for companies post pandemic: to make the transition to digital without affecting the current business experience for customers,” Nilekani said, adding that Infosys is biased to providing “optionality” to clients in the way they do business to deal with changing circumstances.