Zensar focuses on helping companies navigate migration to the cloud
News | 7 Mar 2014
Zensar focuses on helping companies navigate migration to the cloud It’s been a year since the Westborough infrastructure management firm that had been known as Akibia for more than two decades took the name of its parent company, Zensar Technologies. Vivek Gupta, an executive at Zensar for almost three decades who has overseen the Westborough company since its 2010 acquisition, was officially named CEO of Zensar’s infrastructure management division when Akibia’s name was changed. He says “last year has been a fun year for me” because it’s allowed him to “roll up his sleeves” and take charge of an independently-operated unit of the company. India-based Zensar, which had been almost entirely focused on information technology and help desk support since its founding in 1991, wanted to get into infrastructure management — which involves everything on a business’s network, from laptop computers to data centers, according to Gupta. That led to the acquisition of Akibia in 2010 for an undisclosed amount. Today, infrastructure management makes up a third of Zensar’s annual revenue, which equates to between $400 million and $450 million in U.S. dollars, according to Gupta. In terms of employees, the IM division is grown by about 25 over the past year to 200 between the Westborough office and a Northborough parts warehouse. That’s still a fraction of Zensar’s 7,000 employees worldwide. Gupta says that the trend of more companies moving to the cloud have resulted in more, rather than less, business for infrastructure management. “It’s a huge opportunity for us,” he said. “The future is not just cloud. It’s hybrid cloud.” Gupta explains that even as companies ditch some of their network equipment in favor of cloud-based networks, they still generally need to retain some sort of internal data center, as well as both private and public cloud networks. “All these things need to be managed seamlessly,” he said. “What we tried to do is create a seamless delivery process globally.” He said that the infrastructure management division delivers parts quickly to businesses all over the world, and provides someone to physically install them. That portion of the business competes with the computer sellers themselves — such as Microsoftand Dell — but has an advantage in that it is not constrained to a single brand. But a little more than half of the IM business is software-based, providing firewalls and managed data protection to allow employees to use mobile devices without risk of data being stolen or hacked. Competitors for that portion of the business are several multinational IT companies, as well as smaller local security-focused ones. Gupta says in the next year he’s planning on revenue growth of between 15 to 20 percent, and says the Westborough site has room to accommodate that growth for at least the next year or two.