Thought Leaders in Cloud Computing: Interview with Vishnu Bhat, VP and Head of Cloud Services at Infosys (Part 5)

Sramana Mitra: Through this there is a whole operational infrastructure – a reporting, monitoring and IT management infrastructure – that is required. What is your approach to that?

Vishnu Bhat: The cloud ecosystem harbors a productized solution. When we approach our enterprise clients, we predominantly offer service and solution value together. Let’s get back to the example of the client for whom we built the cloud ecosystem and are managing it for them. For this client we did a full assessment of their current state. We looked at their entire application suite, network framework, storage, etc. Then we created a framework that identified the applications that are best for cloud deployment and built a business case around what the best potential cost savings, time-to-market benefits, and productivity improvements would be for the next five years.

At this point we are launching the Cloud Ecosystem Hub for the client and creating some hundred applications. We provide the client with one single invoice that takes the entire ecosystem and the outcome under our contract. It is a single accountability we provide as a cloud ecosystem integrator. That is the trend we see, where the service provider – the cloud ecosystem integrator – takes complete accountability of applications, workloads, and the entire infrastructure that sits behind the cloud and stitches them together into one single outcome-based contract. That is how we are evolving the ecosystem, our services, and our solutions.

SM: When you deliver one of these Cloud Ecosystem Hubs for one of your clients, what percentage of that – from a revenue point of view – is product revenue, and what percentage is service revenue for Infosys?

VB: That depends on the size of the product. In some cases it could be 50% and in others it could be 1%. The holistic view we take here is outcomes over the delivery we do. As the cloud becomes more and more mainstream for enterprises, it is going to be about workloads and outcomes.

SM: Infosys is traditionally an outsourcing company. From what you have said, it seems that you have started productizing things. The question is if cloud computing is leading you to more productization and less service.

VB: When you look at the cloud from an Infosys standpoint, there are two perspectives. One is our services for the cloud – these are all the services we do, helping customers, embracing the cloud and migrating to the cloud, providing consulting and assessment and also provide IT [to] the Cloud Ecosystem Hub. There is a second component, where we provide our solutions in the cloud. These are our business platforms. These are business platforms and domain capabilities, valued together with the entire infrastructure and software to provide them as outcomes.

We have launched about 11 platforms until now. These are platforms are productized and provide business outcomes from an entrance standpoint for customer needs. These combine both software and infrastructure to provide outcomes on a transaction-based scenario. These are the two elements we have. So, there is a services angle and a platform angle.

SM: Is Infosys’ long-term strategy to evolve more into a productized business?

VB: Two years ago we launched the Infosys 3.0 strategy, which is products, platforms, and solutions. Our entire strategy is based on product platforms and solutions that are heavily IP-centric. That is a big part of our strategy in evolving our business in this space of providing platforms and outcomes, which are hosted, cloud oriented and end-to-end transaction based. That is how we see the transformation of this industry from services to productized services and leveraging platforms. That is how we are investing in this space since over two years.

SM: Thank you, Vishnu. It was nice talking to you.

VB: Thank you.

This segment is part 5 in the series : Thought Leaders in Cloud Computing: Interview with Vishnu Bhat, VP and Head of Cloud Services at Infosys
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