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It’s a bold move and if it were anyone else’s idea but Mike Lawrie’s I would have called it foolhardy. CSC has opened its doors and invited in Chennai-based offshore services firm HCL Technologies to its ‘cloud transformation’ party. The previously heavily rumoured ‘partnership’ sees HCL and CSC creating ‘cloud delivery centres’ in Bangalore and Chennai to chase ‘application modernisation’ business at both companies’ clients.
This is not the first time that Lawrie has partnered up with HCL – he did the same at Misys, though this was more of a software development arrangement. But this new partnerhsip puts HCL at the very heart of CSC’s client base, an entrée that the Indian firm must see as priceless.
At my last sighting (2012) CSC had some 24,000 employees in its own Indian operation – around 30% of current headcount – built organically and by acquisition (Covansys in 2007, AppLabs in 2011 – see CSC extends testing service with AppLabs acquisition). This is too light for today’s market (and arguably for the past decade too!). Other ‘offshore-light’ SIs have followed a similar path (e.g. T-Systems and Ordina, both with Cognizant) with the expected result (see Ordina feels pain of Cognizant divorce). HCL has some 88,000 employees, the majority in India.
By the way, in case anyone sees this as CSC making a play for HCL – or indeed HCL making a play for CSC – forget it!
