HCL Technologies on Thursday announced signing a five-year, multi-million dollar outsourcing deal with supply chain services firm UTi Worldwide. The Indian IT firm will provide applications support and maintenance and infrastructure management services to the US-based firm.

HCL will also operate a global service desk in 9 languages for UTi. The Indian IT firm didn’t disclose the value of the deal or the number of employees to be deployed on the contract. A few UTi employees will also be transferred to HCL as part of the deal but both firms refused to divulge details.

UTi Worldwide senior VP and chief information officer Ron Glickman said the deal with HCL will help reduce the complexity of its disparate IT systems and total cost of ownership. Under the contract, HCL will provide operational support for over 250 applications and IT infrastructure in over 60 countries. It will also enable UTi’s transition to a single enterprise software solution and consolidate the firm’s over 50 data centres into two large enterprise-class data centres.

HCL manufacturing and travel, transportation & logistics (TTL) global head Sandeep Kishore said the IT firm will invest the cost savings through the transition into further incremental and transformational projects. “It’s a significant relationship for HCL as it’s a transformation-led integrated applications and infrastructure deal that deepens our credibility,” he said.

HCL started the IT applications and infrastructure transition at UTi towards the end of calendar year 2008. The global service desk will be operational by July, while the consolidation of networks and data centres will be completed next year. Mr Kishore said HCL sees significant growth opportunities in the TTL industry that faces the task of consolidation its disparate IT systems.

HCL has clinched a number of outsourcing deals in the recent past, the largest being a $350-million total IT services outsourcing deal with Readers’ Digest Association (RDA) last month. It also won a seven-year, Rs 393-crore IT services deal from general insurer National Insurance Company that covers application blueprinting, systems integration and IT infrastructure management.

Earlier this month, it signed a $100-million data centre services and transformation deal with printing major Xerox Corporation.

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