July 31, 2020
HCL will provide infrastructure management, cloud, and application services to Ericsson over a period of five years
56 deals worth US$13.9 billion in the telecom space are expected to come up for renewal between Jul and Dec 2020
Next-gen technologies have been projected to contribute up to US$1 trillion to the Indian economy by 2035
Airtel, Infosys, and other Indian companies have also formed international partnerships in the telecoms sector
According to media reports citing an official announcement, HCL Technologies, an Indian IT company, has signed a deal worth over US$600 million with Swedish telecommunications giant Ericsson.
As per an article in Business Today, HCL will provide infrastructure management, cloud, and application services to Ericsson over a period of five years. The article also quoted UK research firm Omdia, which recently said that 56 deals worth US$13.9 billion in the telecom space would come up for renewal between July and December 2020. Hansa Iyengar, a principal analyst at Omdia, added that “most of these are infrastructure deals” signed 7-10 years ago and “will likely involve a complete infrastructure refresh and a significant apps portion as well.”
Next-gen technologies such as Artificial Intelligence (AI) and the Internet of Things (IoT) have been projected to contribute up to US$1 trillion to the Indian economy by 2035.
NITI Aayog, the Government of India’s think tank, released an approach paper in January 2020 urging the Government to set up India’s first AI-specific cloud computing infrastructure, ‘AIRAWAT’ (AI Research, Analytics, and Knowledge Assimilation platform), to bolster AI research, development, and application in India.
Airtel and Infosys, among others, are also Indian companies that have formed international partnerships in this sector. In May 2020, telecommunications giant Airtel announced plans to work with leading technology and software companies, IBM and Red Hat, on designing and creating a cloud network and infrastructure to enable better adoption of next-gen technology in India. Over the past year, Infosys has also signed two major deals – one acquiring Simplus, a USA- and Australia-based salesforce provider dealing in cloud consulting, data integration, and training services for specific applications, and the second with Huawei to jointly offer cloud, big data, and communication solutions, along with enterprise services.