Espresso: Big IT, cloud infra primed for revenue spurt

CRISIL predicts spurt in IT outsourcing deals

Credit rating agency CRISIL expects revenue of the $147 billion Indian IT industry to grow between 10 percent and 11 percent in the current fiscal.

The improvement rides on increased outsourcing and accelerating digital transformation services, accentuated by the COVID-19 pandemic in sectors like banking, financial services and insurance (BFSI), healthcare, retail, and manufacturing. “The pandemic has opened up additional opportunities in digital services due to the surge in remote working, e-commerce and automated services,” said Anuj Sethi, Senior Director at CRISIL Ratings.

“Additionally, deal wins by Indian players have expanded by an annual 20 percent in FY2021, with nearly 80 percent of these being digital deals across verticals.

Cloud IaaS will gross $14 billion by 2025: IDC

The worldwide annual recurring revenues (ARR) from local cloud infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) offerings for compute and storage will increase from $138 million in 2020 to $14 billion in 2025, according to technology advisory International Data Corporation (IDC).

That’s a five-year compound annual growth rate of 151.8 percent. “With dedicated cloud as-a-service solutions, enterprises have an opportunity to bring what they like about public cloud to their own premises, while mitigating restrictions and concerns they have with moving infrastructure off-premises,” said Natalya Yezhkova, Research Vice President, IT Infrastructure, IDC.

As digital transformation continues to shape enterprises globally, driving the investments towards modernisation of IT infrastructures and processes, migration to service-based IT is a significant element of digital transformation.

ArcelorMittal Treasury automates trading ops

ArcelorMittal, the world’s leading steel and mining company and the largest corporate treasury in France, is adopting a straight-through-processing, single treasury management platform solution.

The delivery will enable front-to-back processing for commodities, forex and money market products. The solution will be developed by digital transformation consulting firm Synechron, with Calypso Technology serving as the delivery partner.

The software is at the core of the new information system of ArcelorMittal Treasury helping it automate its treasury and trading operations, including trade booking, pricing analytics, compliance and limits monitoring, and risk management.

Dr Lal PathLabs’ e-commerce play in the works

The way patients interact with healthcare brands has undergone a change during the pandemic, stated Dr Lal PathLabs (DLPL) in its latest annual report.

The diagnostic and healthcare tests company has 231 clinical laboratories, 3,705 patient service centers, and 9,247 pick-up points across India. “In the B2C segment, there is a higher requirement for rendering services at the doorstep, along with higher adoption of online formats to access those services,” the company noted.

In May, Dr Lal PathLabs CEO Bharat U told equity analysts that it is building an e-commerce channel to offer services digitally. Its 2020-21 revenue grew 19 percent, as did its operating profits by 27 percent. 

“With a sharp focus on development of robust technology enabled back-end, DLPL was geared for smoother integration of online and offline approaches,” the company said in the annual report. There is a growing preference for B2B clients to choose organised players like DLPL, it added, referring to its corporate customers.

Matrimony.com buys out Boatman Tech

Matrimony.com, India’s leading online matrimony company, will acquire 100 percent stake in Boatman Tech, which operates ShaadiSaga.com, a fast-growing online wedding services company in New Delhi.

“With this strategic acquisition, we will accelerate our growth through supply enhancement and superior product capabilities,” Murugavel Janakiraman, Chairman and Managing Director of Matrimony.com, said in a press statement.

ShaadiSaga.com is a leading industry player with over 40,000 vendors across multiple services and catering to customers across 15 major cities in the country. It has a monthly active user base of more than 1 million.

Matrimony.com has built a portfolio of offerings like WeddingBazaar.com and Mandap.com. Boatman Tech will help Matrimony.com scale up its presence significantly in north and west India, as well as strengthen its product capabilities, the statement added.

Pentagon scraps $10 billion cloud contract

The US Department of Defense has cancelled a $10 billion cloud-computing contract, which was mired in a legal dispute between Microsoft and AWS. It was awarded to Microsoft in 2019.

Instead of the  Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure (JEDI) contract, the Pentagon has now launched a multi-vendor contract for 'Joint Warfighter Cloud Capability'. It has called for fresh proposals from Microsoft and AWS.

“JEDI was developed when the Department’s needs were different and both the cloud service providers’ technology and our cloud conversancy was less mature,” said John Sherman, acting DoD Chief Information Officer, in a press statement. “Our landscape has advanced and a new way-ahead is warranted to achieve dominance in both traditional and non-traditional warfighting domains,” he added.