It’s a wrap: News this week (Sept 14 – Sept 20)

There have been multiple developments this week on the tech front. From Infosys-LIC partnership to PDG’s $1 billion India investment, this is the list of the most important developments for a quick catch-up:

Lenovo starts manufacturing of AI server chip in India

Lenovo established a research and development lab and announced high-performance artificial intelligence (AI) server manufacturing in India, on Tuesday. 

The R&D lab in Bengaluru will be the 19th of its kind globally for the company. It is one of the four labs dedicated to infrastructure solutions joining server design and development centres in Morrisville, Beijing, and Taipei.

Further, Lenovo has started manufacturing AI servers from its Puducherry facility. The production line at the facility has been operational since 2005 and will now produce enterprise AI and GPU servers for AI workloads. It has a production capacity of around 50,000 enterprise AI rack servers annually and 2,400 high-end GPU units.

LIC-Infosys partnership

Infosys has been selected by the Life Insurance Corporation of India (LIC) to drive its digital transformation initiative called DIVE (Digital Innovation and Value Enhancement). Under the collaboration, Infosys will build the NextGen Digital Platform that will be used for delivering omnichannel engagement and data-driven hyper-personalised experiences to LIC’s customers, agents and employees.

To this end, Infosys will be providing turnkey system integration services from its AI suite of solutions Infosys Topaz and DevSecOps services from Infosys Cobalt. Additionally, Infosys will also set up digital transformation infrastructure, while also monitoring and maintaining it when it is operational.

This week, Infosys also announced an extension of its collaboration with Posti, a leading delivery and logistics services provider in Finland, Sweden, and the Baltics. The renewed engagement will see Infosys leverage Infosys Topaz, to enhance Posti’s customer experience and operational efficiency. Further, Infosys on Tuesday said that it has entered into a long-term collaboration with UK-based community bank Metro Bank to digitise the bank's operations.

NTT Data-IBM partner

NTT DATA, a global IT services provider, and IBM have partnered to launch SimpliZCloud, a fully managed cloud service designed to meet the infrastructure needs of financial services organisations. Built on IBM’s LinuxONE platform, the service aims to support critical applications such as core banking, lending, and risk management. SimpliZCloud offers financial institutions the ability to optimise infrastructure investments by consolidating resources and reducing enterprise software licence costs.

TCS bags McDonald's Philippines deal

Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), announced on Wednesday that it has entered into a two-year partnership with McDonald's Philippines to enhance the technology utilised by the fast-food chain. The financial details of the agreement were not revealed. 

McDonald’s is one of the world’s largest food service retailers with more than 42,000 locations in over 100 countries. TCS formalised the partnership with the Golden Arches Development Corporation (GADC), led by George Yang, which holds the master franchise for McDonald’s in the Philippines. 

On Friday, TCS launched a new delivery center in Warsaw in Poland. With this center, the company aims at expanding its operations in the country and doubling its workforce to over 1,200 people in the region.