TEANECK, NJ, Oct. 25 — Cognizant today announced plans to significantly expand its data center footprint in North America and Europe, and deploy an enterprise-grade cloud infrastructure.

As part of the strategy, Cognizant will initially invest $25 million to open additional data centers in Arizona (U.S.), Virginia (U.S.), Amsterdam (the Netherlands), and Slough (UK). These data centers, coupled with an enterprise-class multi-tenant cloud platform, will further strengthen Cognizant's infrastructure management capabilities and enable clients to maximize value in their IT environment.

Cognizant's enterprise-class, multi-tenant cloud infrastructure platform broadens the company's overall cloud services portfolio, which includes cloud assessment, architecture and design consulting, cloud system integration, and cloud management services across private, public, and hybrid cloud solutions. These services are powered by Cloud360, Cognizant's cloud management solution that efficiently automates provisioning, management, and monitoring of diverse cloud operations from a single consolidated management console. These capabilities position the company well to help clients re-platform existing applications on the cloud, deploy new mobile, software-as-a-service, and social networking services to their end-users, and support other business-critical processes.

"Clients need to modernize their IT capabilities and bring consumer IT models to their users, and at the same time virtualize their infrastructure, rationalize costs, and improve productivity through flexible, as-a-service business models," said Robert Boles, senior vice president of Cognizant's IT Infrastructure Services practice. "With our expanded cloud capabilities across our network of data centers, we can greatly enhance our ability to fulfill this growing client need."

"Emergence of cloud computing shifted the emphasis in infrastructure services away from low-cost labor arbitrage toward transformation-driven offerings," said Ross Tisnovsky, Senior Vice President of Research at Everest Group. "In the absence of industry standards, we believe that service providers without strong in-house infrastructure solutions are less likely to seize cloud-related opportunities, while those that integrate in-house capabilities with system integration and professional services, like Cognizant, will be more successful in providing cloud solutions in the global services marketplace."

These expanded capabilities help Cognizant offer clients a fully integrated suite of business solutions – business process services, application development and support, data center services, cloud infrastructure, remote infrastructure management, and technology and business transformation. It also marks an important milestone in Cognizant's ability to provide clients with flexible, utility-based, as-a-service delivery models specific to their organizational needs.

About Cognizant's IT Infrastructure Services Practice

Cognizant's IT Infrastructure Services (ITIS) practice offers a comprehensive portfolio of managed services, consulting offerings, and transformational solutions that span enterprise computing, end-user computing, infrastructure security, network and convergence services, mobility, and application performance management. With extensive industry domain expertise in transformative Remote Infrastructure Management, which includes Cognizant's industry-leading OnTarget ITIL-based platform and unique Operations Maturity Model, Cognizant's ITIS practice helps clients reduce infrastructure management costs, mitigate risk, and improve business performance.

About Cloud360

Cloud360 is Cognizant's proprietary enterprise-class cloud management solution that efficiently automates provisioning, management, and monitoring of diverse cloud operations from a single consolidated management console. Cloud360 not only eases the migration of enterprise applications to private or public cloud environments, but also provides simplified management of all cloud initiatives. This helps organizations deploy and operate scalable on-demand IT cloud architectures, as well as achieve agility, operational efficiency, better IT governance, and tighter component coordination across the enterprise.

About Cognizant

Cognizant is a leading provider of information technology, consulting, and business process outsourcing services, dedicated to helping the world's leading companies build stronger businesses. Headquartered in Teaneck, New Jersey (U.S.), Cognizant combines a passion for client satisfaction, technology innovation, deep industry and business process expertise, and a global, collaborative workforce that embodies the future of work. With over 50 delivery centers worldwide and approximately 145,200 employees as of June 30, 2012, Cognizant is a member of the NASDAQ-100, the S&P 500, the Forbes Global 2000, and the Fortune 500 and is ranked among the top performing and fastest growing companies in the world.

-----

Source: Cognizant