Netherlands' Sanoma to transfer IT infrastructure & support to Wipro

NEW DELHI: Netherlands-based Sanoma today said it will transfer its IT infrastructure and support to India's third largest software services firm Wipro as part of its 100 million euros cost-cutting programme.

As part of the "centralisation" of services, 38 people in Finland and the Netherlands will become employees of Wipro.

"As part of the strategic redesign communicated on October 31, 2013, Sanoma transfers all ICT infrastructure and support functions to Wipro," Sanoma said in a statement.

With the centralisation of services to one partner, Sanoma targets both more homogeneous Group-wide services and cost savings, it added.

Financial details of the deal were not disclosed. "The ability to react and develop new offerings is crucially important in the changing media environment. The co-operation with Wipro proved to be the best solution both in terms of the price and the quality of the services," Mikael Nurmi, CTO of Sanoma Technology said.

Wipro has deep domain experience from working with customers from the media industry and the co-operation with Wipro ensures the best possibility to speed up our technological development, he added.

Of the 38 people moving to Wipro, 29 people from Finland and nine people from the Netherlands move to Wipro with existing terms of employment.

Of the current infrastructure team, 11 people in Finland and 7 in the Netherlands stay at Sanoma as counterparts for co-operation with Wipro.

Sanoma Technology in-house team will focus more strongly on supporting the services that are critical to the business units in the future.

Details of the total size of the team was not available. "Wipro will leverage Sanoma employees' valuable competence transferred to us, and help Sanoma in meeting its redesign objectives," Ayan Mukerji, Chief Executive, Global Media & Telecom, Wipro said.

The centralisation of services to Wipro is part of Sanoma's 100 million euro cost-cutting programme.

Sanoma is a consumer media and learning company in Europe with presence across multiple platforms.

Its main main markets in learning are Belgium, Finland, the Netherlands, Poland and Sweden.

In 2013, Sanoma's net sales totalled Euro 2.1 billion. Sanoma is listed on the NASDAQ OMX Helsinki stock exchange.