Infosys unveils self-service cloud hub

IDG News Service - Indian outsourcer Infosys Tuesday unveiled a package of services and technologies that aim to help companies deploying hybrid clouds.

Fragmentation of enterprise workloads across technologies and services running on both private clouds and multiple public cloud services is a key issue for customers, so Infosys is offering customers self-service catalogs of well-integrated business applications, platforms, and other point technologies from its partners, said Vishnu Bhat, Infosys' vice president and global head for cloud.

The Infosys Cloud Ecosystem Hub has what it calls a "smart brokerage" feature, which is an enterprise-wide decision support mechanism to select, compare and deploy cloud services from across providers, Bhat said. Decisions can be based on an evaluation of over 20 parameters such as quality of service, technology compatibility, regulatory compliance needs and total cost of ownership of application workloads, he added.

The hub also provides customers with a single-window view of the enterprise cloud system, across private and public cloud and on-premise IT.

Infosys like other Indian outsourcers who are mainly into custom software development and maintenance, are looking at building businesses around customers' adoption of the cloud. It said in July it has 3,000 staff in its cloud practice, and executed over 150 cloud-related projects, including multiple application migrations and re-hosting of mainframe applications to private clouds.

Indian outsourcers can play only a limited role in the cloud market, primarily in systems integration, because they own neither the applications nor the hosting infrastructure, said Sudin Apte, principal analyst and CEO of Offshore Insights, a research and advisory firm. The new offering from Infosys will help it draw attention to its systems integration and other services, he added.

Positioned as a "cloud ecosystem integrator" Infosys is working with over 30 providers of cloud infrastructure, applications and platforms including Amazon Web Services, CA Technologies, Dell, Hitachi Data Systems, Hewlett-Packard, IBM, Microsoft and VMware to build connectors between these various technologies, and also offer to customize the applications and services to meet specific customer needs, Bhat said.

Customers will be given a variety of options in their engagements with vendors, and will for example have the option to tie up with a cloud infrastructure provider or leave it to Infosys to manage the relationship with the provider, Bhat said. Infosys will also host for customers in certain situations.

Besides making money from its own intellectual property like the smart brokerage features and the connectors that go into the integration of technologies from various vendors, Infosys also plans to earn revenue from services such as customization of software for customers, a business that the company has been into, and which it can deliver at a low cost from offshore locations like India.

John Ribeiro covers outsourcing and general technology breaking news from India for The IDG News Service. Follow John on Twitter at @Johnribeiro. John's e-mail address is john_ribeiro@idg.com