PLEASANTVILLE, New York, March 16 /PRNewswire/ -- The Reader's Digest Association, Inc. (RDA) has entered into a long-term IT outsourcing services agreement, covering the entire IT landscape from infrastructure to applications, with HCL Technologies Ltd. (HCL), a leading global IT services provider, the two companies announced today. The value of the agreement is estimated to be approximately $350 million over a seven-year contract term.
The global solution will provide IT support to RDA's operations across 45 countries and 14 languages covering North America, Latin America, Central and Western Europe, and Asia Pacific. These will be supported regionally from delivery centers in Cary, North Carolina; Krakow, Poland; and India, as well as a central global network. The scope includes applications development and infrastructure support across Oracle Universe, Open Technologies and Mainframe; and Infrastructure support for network, security, storage, end-user computing, Wintel and Unix server management.
Albert L. Perruzza, RDA's Senior Vice President for Global Operations, IT and Business Redesign, said the partnership is expected to strengthen RDA's IT capabilities while producing significant savings over the course of the agreement.
"IT is a key enabler to our business," Perruzza said. "We expect to see dramatic reductions in our total IT costs, even as HCL helps us to bring our IT standards up to world class in terms of cutting-edge technology and practices, functionality and service. We look forward to a long relationship of mutual trust with HCL."
Under the agreement, HCL will update and modernize RDA's IT legacy assets. Additionally, it will rebuild and migrate RDA's mainframe environment in its New Jersey Data Center facility and implement a new tools framework to provide business-aligned, unified, real-time visibility into the health of the IT environment.
R. Srikrishna, Senior Vice President, North America for HCL Technologies ISD, said: "With its complex scope and global scale, this alliance re-asserts our capabilities in delivering truly transformational and globally delivered IT Services. We are pleased to have been selected by RDA and are working hard on flawless execution."
HCL Technologies Corporate Vice President Sanjeev Nikore said, "Our partnership with RDA is a unique service offering in which HCL blends all of its outsourcing strengths - applications and infrastructure capabilities, industry knowledge, and global reach - to help RDA achieve fundamental transformation at the enterprise level."
The resulting IT service will be staffed by a combination of current RDA IT employees, RDA IT staff who are joining HCL, and HCL on-site staff and remote support.
The value proposition of HCL's solution is based on outsourcing the IT base workload. The IT capabilities will be generated using discretionary capacity that will be mutually forecasted, budgeted and adjusted periodically, based on joint planning. RDA will leverage the expertise of HCL's "Centers of Excellence" for global fulfillment, marketing, digital interactive and shared businesses services, focusing on technologies like AS/400, Microsoft, WebTech and Messaging and a centralized knowledge management and technical consultancy portal. The scope includes an end-to-end Data Center and Application Portfolio optimization to consolidate applications globally.
HCL pioneered the concept of Remote Infrastructure Management (RIM) with a co-sourcing engagement model, which has added substantial value to customers including more than 90 Fortune / Global 1000 enterprises. The company was cited as a leader in Global IT Infrastructure Outsourcing in an independent vendor evaluation study by Forrester Wave(TM), Q2, 2007 and No.1 "Specialty Offshore Infrastructure Services Provider" by NeoIT and "Managing Offshore" magazine. The company currently manages more than 800,000 mission-critical devices systems and supports 500,000 business users. HCL has also been ranked as the World's No.1 Best Performing IT Infrastructure Services by Global Services 100 Survey 2008.
About HCL Technologies
HCL Technologies is a leading global IT services company, working with clients in the areas that impact and redefine the core of their businesses. Since its inception into the global landscape after its IPO in 1999, HCL has focused on "transformational outsourcing," underlined by innovation and value creation, and offers integrated portfolio of services including software-led IT solutions, remote infrastructure management, engineering and R&D services and BPO. HCL leverages its extensive global offshore infrastructure and network of offices in 19 countries to provide holistic, multi-service delivery in key industry verticals including Financial Services, Manufacturing, Aerospace & Defense, Telecom, Retail & CPG, Life Sciences & Healthcare, Media & Entertainment, Travel, Transportation & Logistics, Automotive, Government and Energies & Utilities. HCL takes pride in its philosophy of "Employee First," which empowers our 52,957 transformers to create a real value for the customers. For more information, please visit www.hcltech.com.
About HCL Enterprise
HCL is a $5 billion leading Global Technology and IT Enterprise that comprises two companies - HCL Technologies & HCL Infosystems. Founded in 1976, it is one of India's original IT garage start-ups. Its range of offerings spans Product Engineering, Custom & Package Applications, BPO, IT Infrastructure Services, IT Hardware, Systems Integration, and distribution of ICT products. The HCL team comprises over 58,000 professionals of diverse nationalities, who operate from 20 countries including 360 points of presence in India. For more information, please visit www.hcl.in.
About The Reader's Digest Association, Inc.
The Reader's Digest Association, Inc., is a global multi-brand media and marketing company that educates, entertains and connects audiences around the world. The company builds multi-platform communities based on branded content in areas like Food & Entertaining, Health & Wellness, and Home & Garden. With offices in 45 countries, it markets books, magazines, and music, video and educational products reaching a customer base of 130 million households in 79 countries. It publishes 92 magazines, including 50 editions of Reader's Digest, the world's largest-circulation magazine, operates 65 branded websites generating 18 million unique visitors per month, and sells approximately 68 million books, music and video products across the world each year. Its global headquarters are in Pleasantville, N.Y.
