Indian firms run data centres best, Wipro tops

A clutch of prime Indian software vendors, with Wipro Technologies at the vanguard, have emerged global leaders in remote data centre management in a study by ARM Research.

Leading Indian and international players were evaluated on their service and organisational attributes. The ranking was awarded based on a combination of qualitative and quantitative inputs coupled with customer references, says a press release.

Companies were assessed on both company risk and service risk. Wipro came out ahead of Infosys, TCS and HCL Technologies on service risk but was at about the same level as Infosys and TCS on company risk. HCL technologies came after the trio on both counts. But the entire Indian quartet emerged ahead of IBM, HP and EDS, which essentially fell in another cluster.

Remote data centre management covers IT help desk, system administration, network, storage, server and database management from remote locations without transferring data centre IT assets and employees to the outsourcing provider.

The report by Lance Travis, vice-president of the core research group of AMR Research said "customers reported satisfactory levels of service from Indian services providers and savings of between 30 per cent and 80 per cent, making remote data centre management an excellent way to cut IT operational costs."

Travis added that "Wipro is the leader in the group. It has the most experience with global customers, numerous satisfied customers, and strong management backing to grow and improve the service."

"Wipro has been evangelising the concept of remote infrastructure services and with the growing interest shown by global customers, we continue to invest towards innovating newer service delivery models," said G K Prasanna, vice-president, Technology Infrastructure Services.

Wipro Technology Infrastructure Services (TIS) currently works with over 140 customers and employs over 1,400 consultants who provide services like consulting, system integration, infrastructure management, technical support services and enterprise service desk.

TIS is the largest provider of these service among the offshore vendors in terms of revenues, customers and the number of consultants.