HCL signs $250 Million deal with News Corp UK

New Delhi: IT major HCL Technologies announced a five-year deal with media conglomerate News Corp for managing its data centres and IT across UK newspapers like The Times, The Sun and The Sunday Times.

Under the deal, HCL will be transforming News Corp's UK subsidiary News International's datacenters and migrating its operating systems to a lower cost solution. The deal is pegged to be in the range of $200-250 million, according to industry experts. Company officials denied to disclose the deal size.

Is social media more addictive than cigarettes?

	YES
	NO

   View result

"We will be managing and consolidating News International's datacenters and IT. The datacenters will remain hosted in the UK. We will be managing them remotely from our facilities in India, and also onsite from UK. This will drive a reduction in their capex and result in significant savings for the client," Pradeep Bindal, Senior Vice President and Worldwide Sales Head at HCL Technologies' Infrastructure Services Division told Economic Times.

The Noida-based IT firm claims to have over 40 clients in the media, publishing and entertainment (MPE) vertical. MPE vertical constitutes about 6.8 percent of HCL Technologies' revenues. The company has one of the largest remote infrastructure management facilities amongst all IT vendors in the country. HCL Technologies scrip rose 0.8 percent on the Bombay Stock Exchange to close at 348.90, post announcement of the deal in the afternoon on Tuesday.

HCL had signed a seven-year, $350-million deal in March this year with Reader's Digest Association, before the U.S. based publishing major filed for a bankruptcy petition in August. The company had also signed a deal with media house Viacom, for developing an online media content and platform. Mckinsey and Nasscom have jointly estimated IT infrastructure management to gross $28 billion in the next five years.