Infosys-sees-uptick-in-engineering-services-with-5G-industrial-IoT

Infosys Ltd’s engineering services business is gaining momentum as organisations across sectors deploy software-defined 5G network and industrial Internet of Things (IoT) applications like predictive maintenance.

While Infosys does not classify engineering services as a separate business unit, nearly half of its offerings such as – 3D printing, robotics, IoT – are clubbed under its digital revenues. For the quarter ended December, the company’s digital business which contributed 40.6% to the total revenues, grew 40.8% in constant currency to $1.3 billion.

“Engineering is actually one of those horizontal service lines where we serve each of our verticals globally…Our newer digital offerings are actually transcending boundaries. Certain businesses like mining operations are exploring to put up their private 5G, especially in the US where they have a CBRS (Citizens Broadband Radio Service) band available for free. Similarly, IoT is relevant for manufacturing, public services, automotive, etc.,” said Nitesh Bansal, senior vice president & global head, Engineering Services, Infosys.

Bansal said Infosys is seeing green shoots emerge in the industrial IoT space which the industry has been talking about for the last three years or so. “We can possibly see it expanding in the coming year, where the size of the engagements will become bigger…We are currently working with an aircraft engine manufacturing company where we started with one plant of theirs. But with the initial success, the client now wants to get this done for all its 15 plants in North America,” he said.

Infosys drives its engineering services through five global labs across the world. Apart from a key centre at its Bengaluru headquarters, Infosys has four other core engineering units at Mysuru in Karnataka, Baden in Switzerland, Moscow in Russia and Karlovac in Croatia.

“We are a fairly large team size, definitely with over 10,000 people globally but less than 20,000,” Bansal said. “Out of all the employees in the team, 75% of them are based in India and 25% are based outside but at any given point of time, we have about the 30-35% of the people outside India in client sites and our labs.”

For Infosys’ engineering services, North America is the largest market in terms of volume but Europe represents a “decent share” given how “engineering dominated” the continent has been, Bansal said. Apart from these two key geographies, the engineering customers are spread across Australia, New Zealand, Japan, China, Taiwan, and Hong Kong.

In India, Infosys’ engineering services has only a small presence in specific targeted areas, but “5G can certainly be one of those areas because India has the scale and there is no question in my mind that from a technology adoption, India will get there,” Bansal said.

In an Infosys-commissioned research survey covering 850 industry practitioners, 90% of the participants said they were actively investigating business cases using 5G technology while 50% believed that system integrators (like Infosys) will have to play a greater role in their 5G deployment.

Infosys has set up dedicated 5G ‘Living Labs’ in – Bengaluru, Melbourne in Australia, Richardson in Texas, Indianapolis in Indiana, and Frankfurt in Germany – to develop and deploy 5G solutions and help clients in their digital transformation journeys.

Courtsy: Refferal link