The Times of India: Cognizant’ Executive Vice-President of Strategy Says New Technologies are Fuelling Cognizant’s Growth

“Cognizant is helping clients with a dual mandate. We are helping them build an efficient cost base and we are driving innovation on their business side,” says Malcolm Frank. “Customer IT budgets are flat and yet they want to invest in emerging technologies like SMAC (social, mobility, analytics, cloud). So we are helping to cut costs and then enabling the surplus generated to be invested back into technology.”

He adds, “Our SMAC (social, mobile, analytics, cloud) offerings continue to gain significant traction. We will have $500 million in revenues from SMAC this year, and we started this business just three years ago. Consulting is another major client requirement now, given that they want to run their businesses differently. Our capabilities there have enabled us to build that business to $700 million, from $100 million five years ago.”

Frank says discretionary spends are definitely coming back, especially in areas around SMAC, and increasingly in internet of things. “Company executives can no longer make guesses about markets and customer needs. They have to be backed by data, which is where social computing platforms, big data and analytics become critical. But the benefits of the investment will flow to IT vendors who can turn SMAC into business results.” Just as SMAC enables one to get insights into human beings, Frank says ‘internet of things’ will enable insights into things or products. “Every product that’s over $50 can be IT-enabled,” he says.

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