HCL Technologies in IT infrastructure deal with De Beers

New Delhi: India’ fourth largest software services company HCL Technologies Ltd on Wednesday said it has won a contract from De Beers Group of Companies to deliver end-to-end IT infrastructure solutions including data centre operations, multi-lingual service desk, local area network (LAN) management, security services, service management and project services to “transform De Beers’ IT infrastructure across the globe.”

The size of the contract was not disclosed.

“This deal marks HCL’s continued expansion in emerging markets like South Africa and many locations across Africa, Latin America and Asia. It further strengthens HCL’s presence in the mining vertical,” said Ashish Gupta, executive vice president and head – Europe, the Middle East and Africa, HCL Technologies. “This deal is also a reaffirmation of the work HCL has done over the last 18 months with Anglo American to move them from a Gen 1 outsourcing contract and significantly improve services while driving a relationship culture focused on delivering work beyond the contract.”

“HCL already manages the IT Infrastructure of Anglo American Plc, the majority shareholder of De Beers and the current deal allows a tighter integration across the two companies with common technology platforms and IT Service Management,” the company added.

De Beers is involved in every stage of the diamond business: mining, trading, selling polished diamonds and jewellery, and developing synthetic diamonds for industrial use.

Under the arrangement, HCL Tech will support De Beers’ global presence in Botswana, Namibia, South Africa, the United Kingdom among others, managing around eight data centres across five regions. This includes some extremely remote locations such as offshore diamond mining vessels along the Namibian coastline and Snap Lake mine in Canada, the company said.

“Where we have previously had several service providers in each local region, this agreement affords us more comprehensive management of our underlying IT environment and enables us to run a more industrialised infrastructure service that underpins our broader IT strategy,” said Craig Charlton, group chief information officer, De Beers Group.

Disclaimer: This information has been collected through secondary research and IBEF is not responsible for any errors in the same.