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 Bangalore: The Infosys and Microsoft Catalytic IT concept centre was inaugurated today at the Infosys campus in Bangalore, by Jean-Philippe Courtois, president of Microsoft International. Also present at the inauguratuion were Ravi Venkatesan, chairman, Microsoft Corporation India Private Ltd., and Kris Gopalakrishnan, chief operating officer, Infosys Technologies.
In November 2004 Infosys and Microsoft had announced a joint investment in this IT-led business transformation initiative. This state-of-the-art concept centre has been established to provide customers with an informative and interactive experience wherein they can envision, architect and evaluate Catalytic IT solutions. The portfolio of solutions and services under Catalytic IT enables enterprise businesses and their employees to realise a simplified, flexible IT environment that lowers the total cost of ownership and enables rapid change and innovation. Catalytic IT combines Infosys' consulting, research, intellectual property and project methods with the latest Microsoft application platform, which includes Windows Server System, the Microsoft Office system and Visual Studio development tools. The Catalytic IT solution and services suite addresses four pivotal IT business issues - legacy modernisation, connected business, infrastructure optimisation and enterprise resource planning (ERP) consolidation. Over 30 intellectual property assets, service offerings, blueprints and award-winning solutions enable such transformation. Through Catalytic IT, enterprises can enhance stakeholder intimacy, attain product or service leadership, and achieve operational excellence.
Infosys' infrastructure optimisation solutions helped Johnson Controls Inc, a global market leader in automotive systems and facility management and control, improve its operational efficiency by migrating to the Microsoft platform. The migration was effected across multiple business units spread across North America, South America, Latin America and Canada. Explaining the migration process, Mark D. Schoeppel, vice president, Global IT Infrastructure at Johnson Controls, says, "We had approximately 20,000 desktops and 250 servers across the Americas region on a variety of diverse solutions. The execution of this regional migration project was key to completing our global Active Directory environment. With many of our plants being 24x7 JIT (just-in-time) production facilities, we required minimal or no downtime during migration." Talking about the solution benefits, Schoeppel says, "Infosys' innovative network-centric migration solution has enabled us to standardise on the Microsoft Windows operating environment across regions with minimal disruption to business. This solution has improved our IT responsiveness while lowering migration and management costs." Infosys created a Microsoft ASP.NET web-based solution for SCI, a $1.86-billion death care services industry leader. The transformation, over two years, started with a small proof of concept to validate the Microsoft .NET architecture and solution, and culminated with a robust .NET application being used by almost 1,600 locations in North America. "The concepts of Catalytic IT provide a powerful approach to transformation," says John Del Mixon, managing director of IT at SCI, on the transformation initiative. "The transformation programme at SCI will result in an estimated IT savings of over $4 million per annum."
Catalytic IT provides a self-funding and evolutionary approach to transformation. Carl Greiner, senior vice president at Ovum, says, "CIOs are looking for pragmatic and incremental approaches for streamlining their IT organisations and creating better business alignment. Such transformations must deliver predictable and measurable returns so that ongoing support is garnered and realised savings help fund the ongoing effort." "At Microsoft we remain committed to establishing new benchmarks in technological innovation that help accelerate business results for customers," Courtois said during the inauguration of the centre. "Through our latest joint initiative with Infosys on Catalytic IT, customers can leverage the strengths of both companies in transforming their business. Infosys' strong expertise on Microsoft technologies combined with its commitment to demonstrating compelling business value to customers makes it a leading Microsoft global partner." Gopalakrishnan said, "Investment in technology solutions that bring business excellence to our clients is an absolute priority at Infosys. Catalytic enables our customers to leverage IT as a catalyst in business transformation. Our strong relationship with Microsoft | 
