Infosys Enhances Core Service Offerings for Global Clients

A year after taking reins of Infosys as its first non-founder chief executive, Vishal Sikka on Thursday rolled out the software major's 3.0 version by enhancing its core service offerings to global clients.

"The enhanced services in design thinking, platforms and knowledge-based IT (KBIT) will help our clients address non-disruptive renewal and simplification of their landscapes, find new offerings and business models and develop a culture of innovation," he told about 1.8 lakh techies here and away at the launch which was also webcast.

From offering software services, system integration and application development (1.0 version) in its first two decades, the 34-year-old company graduated to offer products, platforms and consulting services in its second avatar (2.0) over a decade ago and now has moved into the 3.0 version.

Calling the new service offerings 'Aikido', an East Asian phrase for self-defence and martial arts, Sikka said under 'ki', the company would offer knowledge-based management and new landscapes to capture knowledge about its people, structures and systems over time.

"As a large scale and modular service to help renew enterprises, the 'ki' services include knowledge-based IT strategy, involving KBIT assessments, development of an operating roadmap and a portfolio rationalisation of present initiatives," he said.

The $8.7 billion (roughly Rs. 57,288 crores) firm will also offer knowledge-based curation services, cost optimisation to help its enterprisers renew their mainframe applications and drive automation in business operations.

Similarly, 'ki'-based innovation will leverage new application development, new technology and platform adoption.

"In Aikido, 'ki' is knowledge-based IT, 'do' in design thinking and 'ai' in platforms. This will accelerate execution of our strategy to renew services and move into new areas, as well as to tie our service lines to the strategic priorities of our clients," Sikka said.

In 'do', the outsourcing firm will provide strategic design consulting to identify challenges for clients, design systems to amplify innovation and create and deploy intellectual property for them.

"'Do' will provide us a framework to find, understand and define problems most important to clients and their businesses," he said, adding transformational digital experiences will focus on enabling clients experience design and explore collaborations.

"We will build a future workforce and a workplace leveraging our capabilities in education and training, facility management and sustainability and offer them to our clients for training, workforce acquisition and workspace management," he said.

The company's US-based consulting subsidiary will offer the first two services under 'ki' and 'do' while Sikka, referring to platforms and platforms as a service to build intelligent solutions as 'ai', said the vertical would harmonise and unify the disjointed initiatives in enterprises and help build solutions to business problems.

"As an open source data analytics platform, our information platform will enable businesses to operationalise their data assets and tap new opportunities for rapid innovation and growth.

"Just as Aikido aims to understand forces and redirect them into strength, our ai, ki and do services will help combine knowledge and energy in an enterprise towards its strategic path and priorities," he said.

Under 'ai', service automation platforms will leverage artificial intelligence and knowledge-based techniques.

"Our own automation platform, Panaya and other offerings in engineering services, back office and testing space will be used to build intelligent solutions," Sikka added.

Similarly, mobile platforms based on Skava will offer clients a hybrid mobile application platform to deliver experiences on the cloud.

"Our Edge suite of innovative, cloud-hosted business platforms and software products offered to clients as 'pay-as-you-use' services, focused on realising business outcomes by driving revenue growth, cost-effectiveness and improved profitability," he said.

The company acquired the US-based automation technology firm Panaya for $200 million (roughly Rs. 1,317 crores) in February and Skava, a leading provider of digital experience solutions, including mobile commerce, for $120 million (roughly Rs. 790 crores) in April.

The company also plans to offer platforms for the Internet of Things (IoT) and Application Programming Interface (API) needs of its global clients.

"Together, ai, ki and do help bring our slew of services to serve strategic priorities of global businesses," Sikka added.