HCL Technologies, a leading global IT services provider, today announced that the company has signed an IT Infrastructure transformation contract with The De Beers Group of Companies, the world's leading diamond business.
Leveraging its Enterprise of Future (EoF) offering, HCL will deliver end-to-end IT infrastructure solutions including data centre operations, multi-lingual service desk, LAN management, security services, service management including tools, desk side support and project services to transform De Beers' IT Infrastructure across the globe. HCL already manages the IT Infrastructure of Anglo American, 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.
Craig Charlton, Group CIO, De Beers Group 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."
"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 & Head - EMEA, HCL Technologies ISD. "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 focussed on delivering work beyond the contract."
The engagement involves supporting De Beers' global presence in Botswana, Namibia, South Africa, the United Kingdom and elsewhere around the world with HCL taking responsibility for eight data centres across five regions. The scope of the work includes some extremely remote locations such as offshore diamond mining vessels along the Namibian coastline and Snap Lake mine in Canada, accessible only via ice roads in winter.
De Beers will benefit from reduction in operating costs, improved processes and SLA-driven services, integration with the Anglo American environment, and benefits of advanced IT frameworks and processes such as HCL's EoF, Cloud-based Service Management tool - Service Now, a common platform for all service providers within the De Beers environment; migration to cloud-based e-mail service and Office 365.
HCL established its South African operation in 2009 and is a level-three BBBEE contributor. Through a highly targeted focus on specific business, the company has gone about establishing a foothold in the southern African marketplace and made significant inroads into leading South African and multi-national organisations.
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