31 July 2009
The two companies say the goal for Invensys is to improve the design, development and delivery of IOM’s products and solutions for customers around the globe, and for Cognizant, to increase its focus on the manufacturing sector.Cognizant was incubated in 1994 as the technology arm of U.S. –based Dun & Bradstreet Corporation. It considers itself a pioneer in offshore outsourcing, claiming its business represents the “fourth generation offshore outsourcing.”**************************************PHOTO: Francisco D'Souza, President and CEO, Cognizant, and Sudipta Bhattacharya, CEO and President, Invensys Operations Management, **************************************As a part of the new business relationship, Cognizant has signed an initial five-year, multi-million dollar contract with Invensys Operations Management to augment and maintain Invensys’ suite of products. To realise this goal, offers to join Cognizant have been made to over 400 Invensys Operations Management employees from its existing R&D centre in Hyderabad.Steve Young, VP of global development for IOM, said he was “overwhelmed with the enthusiastic support” from the Invensys employees in Hyderabad and expected more than 95% to accept the offer to work for Cognizant. He said for them it was a “career growth opportunity.”Opportunity for CognizantAccording to Cognizant sources, “This relationship will strengthen Cognizant’s strong presence in the manufacturing industry and strengthen its ability to provide end-to-end services to its customers. “It will enable Cognizant to further expand its customer base in discrete manufacturing, process manufacturing, energy and utilities, pharmaceutical, and consumer goods segments with services and offerings in Product Lifecycle Management (PLM), Manufacturing Operations Management (MOM), and Enterprise Asset Management (EAM). Invensys comments“This relationship is significant,” said Sudipta Bhattacharya, Chief Executive Officer and President, Invensys Operations Management. "It is another important step in executing our long-term growth strategy, part of an initiative we undertook several months ago that will help us become a high-performing, integrated technology company," said Mr. Bhattacharya. "Leveraging a reputable and proven partner like Cognizant accelerates our ability to expand capacity and move into adjacent markets." Employee transferAs part of the agreement, the Invensys Operations Management Development Centre (IDC) in India will go over to Cognizant. “We expect it will significantly expedite the knowledge transfer in the overall transition process,” said Mr. Young. IOM still owns all the intellectual property and is fully accountable for all of the deliverables, he said. The team that is going over to Cognizant will handle much of the "nuts-and-bolts" work of the software that underpins the applications, such as changes in operating systems and communications and device drivers. India's plentiful supply of well-trained IT professionals has made the country a centre for this type of outsourcing activity.“Cognizant we’re expected to improve our ability to adapt to changing market conditions and also improve our time-to-market for deliverables as well as our capacity to innovate. In addition we expect we will mitigate risk on all the existing projects since those projects that we’re working with IDC resources remain untouched and continue intact without change,” he said.For Cognizant’s part, it says it intends to make an offer of employment to the 400 Invensys Operations Management employees as part of their strategic offering to supply an array of development and maintenance services, including the development of manufacturing engineering, enterprise manufacturing intelligence, advanced applications, operations management, measurement and instrumentation, safety and critical control, supervisory control and data acquisition, and distributed control systems."Externally, our customers and ecosystem partners should see no difference in our products or their working relationship with us."Francisco D’Souza, President and CEO, Cognizant, said, “We are pleased to partner with Invensys Operations Management and welcome on board their highly talented and experienced professionals in Hyderabad. “We believe such collaborative innovation is the wave of the future and we are excited at the possibilities that will come about through this relationship.”Edge to coreMahesh Venkateswaran, senior vice president, Cognizant, described how his company has grown rapidly over the past 15 years to the 63,000 person company it is today. Cognizant’s approach is what he calls an “edge-to-core” strategy consisting of building application packages around the periphery of manufacturing. They have established a strong presence around the ERP layer, where they now have about 5,000 employees dedicated.“In fact, we are the global services partner for SAP,” Mr. Venkateswaran said.“The partnership provides Cognizant with an opportunity to expand our circle of services and to create multiple new revenue streams in important following areas,” he said, mentioning product development integrated with Invensys, and leveraging domain expertise with Invensys to develop industry-specific solutions. Cognizant will also invest in a “world-class” industry automation laboratory in India, to create specific solutions on Invensys platforms that integrates with the other layers of the operations, such as the ERP layer or other business layers. The lab will also be used to “showcase solutions to our clients.” Mr. Venkateswaran said.“It will put our manufacturing business into a different orbit.”
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