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Business News/ Companies / People/  Customers back new Infosys CEO Vishal Sikka
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Customers back new Infosys CEO Vishal Sikka

Leading customers of Infosys say it stands to benefit from his experience as a world-class technologist and product innovator

On Thursday, Infosys named Vishal Sikka as the company’s first non-founder and fifth CEO, marking the beginning of a new generation, not just for Infosys, but, potentially, also for India’s $118 billion IT industry. Photo: Aniruddha Chowdhury/MintPremium
On Thursday, Infosys named Vishal Sikka as the company’s first non-founder and fifth CEO, marking the beginning of a new generation, not just for Infosys, but, potentially, also for India’s $118 billion IT industry. Photo: Aniruddha Chowdhury/Mint

Bangalore: As Vishal Sikka prepared to take over as chief executive officer (CEO) of Infosys Ltd at the start of a new era, leading customers of India’s second largest software services exporter applauded his appointment, saying the former industry bellwether stands to benefit from his experience as a world-class technologist and product innovator.

They said Sikka’s appointment will also enable Infosys, which counts the likes of Bank of America Corp. and Procter and Gamble among its top customers, to shed its image of a plain-vanilla information technology (IT) services company —it could now be perceived as a company capable of developing strong software products and solutions.

“I know Vishal very well, since he was our executive sponsor at SAP. For more than five years, I worked with him in a very fruitful way. He is a seasoned developer and knows technology inside out. At Infosys, they are moving more and more into product development or at least difficult implementations, so Vishal can use all his experience in that field," said Michael Gorriz, chief information officer at Daimler AG, which has ongoing contracts with Infosys.

On Thursday, Infosys named Sikka as the company’s first non-founder and fifth CEO, marking the beginning of a new generation, not just for Infosys, but, potentially, also for India’s $118 billion IT industry.

The company’s founders, led by N.R. Narayana Murthy, were among those who pioneered the global outsourcing delivery model that employs thousands of engineers working on back-office projects for multinationals such as Citigroup Inc. and General Electric Co., reducing the cost of software development.

Murthy and co-founder S. Gopalakrishnan will step down from the company on Saturday, while CEO S.D. Shibulal will leave in end-July. “I think this is a good move from Infosys," said a senior executive at a large European consumer products company, which outsources millions of dollars of back-office projects to Infosys every year. He requested anonymity as his company does not allow media interviews.

“Also, importantly, he (Sikka) will have a free rein in running Infosys, given that the founders are gone. He will have to move towards core platforms that support businesses. He also needs to ensure that they build good financial software products; they need to have more of those based on a new rival HANA-like Big Data architecture," said the executive, who has exchanged emails with Sikka, but never met him.

Prior to his role at Infosys, the Stanford University-educated Sikka was a board member and global product head at SAP AG, which makes business software. He is widely credited as the brains behind SAP’s HANA analytics platform that has raked in over $1 billion in revenue since its launch.

Customers such as Daimler said Sikka’s experience would help him shore up Infosys’s fledgling products and platforms business called Edgeverve Systems. This business, which currently generates less than 6% of the company’s revenue and focuses on newer technologies such as cloud computing, is at the core of Infosys’s 3.0 strategy.

“Vishal is a good leader and has a very good network in the industry. So I think this is an excellent move for him and for Infosys. During his professional life, he has learned how to deal in Europe and America at the same time and he is Indian, which qualifies him in a special way to run Infosys," said Gorriz.

Infosys, he pointed out, is one SAP’s largest implementation partners. “I can imagine that this move could even be very beneficial for both sides," he added.

Clients, meanwhile, cautioned not to expect a quick transformation and change in direction at Infosys, saying it would take the firm at least a few years to come up with any breakthrough innovation.

“It will take some time for him (Sikka) to rebuild Infosys, but I see announcements like these in a positive light. Look at Microsoft (under Satya Nadella)—they have already changed the way people look at the company, it’s rejuvenated the company. I think this can rejuvenate Infosys as well, and his Bay Area connections will help them," said the executive cited above.

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Published: 13 Jun 2014, 11:48 PM IST
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