Visibility and collaboration will go to new level, says Infosys

Infosys vice president Sudhir Chaturvedi cites SVC users as including "a leading telecommunications equipment and service provider managing eur 4 billion worth of direct material sourcing, a leading online services company managing $750 million in hardware for data centres, a major digital imaging company and a fire suppression and building products company". According to Chaturvedi, the system sits on top of any supply chain system and provides the flexibility and decision-support that existing configurations lack. Chaturvedi explains that this is achieved by harnessing a mix of performance management, analytics, collaboration and event-based exception management, all sitting on the Microsoft technology stack and enabling interoperability with "SAP, Oracle, home grown, or other IT vendor software". Says Chaturvedi: "Our platform is built on the Microsoft technology stack, and enables collaboration and performance management. It takes about three or four months to configure. It collects all the data that supply chain professionals need automatically, and provides information on a real time basis." Meanwhile, Infosys' Community Workspace Platform, which Chaturvedi says was "inspired by social computing", has moved on from its pilot project with Intel developers around the world. "All six of our user companies are multi billion dollar enterprises in the hi-tech and process industries, and they're using it as an add-on to what they're already doing," he explains. "The concept is different to existing collaborative working spaces, like those from PTC and Dassault, in that it doesn't just push PLM and CAD/CAM in a portal environment. This is much more open, so you can collaborate with outside users and make discussion happen faster and with very different groups," he adds. Chaturvedi also suggests that the cash investment required "is nothing" – although he concedes "there are some set-up costs for the environment itself and considering the community, and what you want to get out of it". However, costs are certainly low, and billing is on usage only – which looks attractive.