Cognizant wins more deals through T-Systems partnership

CHENNAI: Cognizant and T-Systems on Tuesday said they have signed an agreement with European automotive supplier Continental, to jointly provide application management services to the research and development operations of Continental's tyre divisions in Hanover. Cognizant will provide the bulk of the services from India.

As part of the three-year contract with Continental, the partners will replace the company's current service provider of over ten years. The details about the previous vendor and the size of the contract were not available.

This is the second deal win that Cognizant has disclosed, through its partnership with T-Systems. The first, was won from Deutsche Telekom, to develop customer relationship management (CRM) and enterprise business intelligence systems.

IT and ITES companies are increasingly using the partnership model to win clients in markets such as Europe and the Middle East. In Cognizant's case, the T-Systems alliance has helped in making headway in the German market, which has traditionally been resistant to outsourcing services outside Germany.

In March last year, Cognizant took over the operations of T-Systems India and its 1150 employees as part of a system integration alliance with the company's parent Deutsche Telekom. Through this deal, Cognizant became T-Systems' supplier for offshore services from India.

At the time of acquisition, the company's president and MD, R Chandrasekaran had said, "We expect the partnership to generate material revenue from both growing our offshore operations to support T-Systems' existing clients, as well as revenue resulting from jointly winning new clients. In aggregate, we expect to generate at least $40 million in the first year of the partnership."