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Businesses AI

Infosys Loses Ten-Year, $1.5 Billion AI Contract (theregister.com) 23

Infosys has lost a ten-year, $1.5 billion deal it announced just three months ago in September 2023. From a report: The Indian services giant advised investors of the deal on September 14th, describing it as "a Memorandum of Understanding with a global company to provide enhanced digital experiences, along with modernization and business operations services, leveraging Infosys platforms & AI solutions" with a total client target spend of $1.5 billion over 15 years.

That announcement included the caveat that Infosys and the unnamed company would have to conclude a Master Agreement to seal the deal. A December 23rd filing revealed that didn't happen. "The global company has now elected to terminate the Memorandum of Understanding and the parties will not be pursuing the Master Agreement," the statement revealed. Infosys's annual revenue topped $18 billion last year, so losing this deal won't cause massive pain.

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Infosys Loses Ten-Year, $1.5 Billion AI Contract

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  • by HBI ( 10338492 ) on Wednesday December 27, 2023 @05:26PM (#64110307)

    You don't announce MoUs and stuff. You announce signed agreements. Now they managed to give themselves a black eye.

    • They got to claim to be a "leader in AI" for 4 months, at a crucial time in the hype cycle. Hard to say whether it was worth it. I guess it depends on who you ask. They probably did manage to fool some, at least.

      • by cusco ( 717999 )

        Not sure about in India, but if this happened in the US it would be a transparent attempt to manipulate the stock price.

  • by GrahamJ ( 241784 ) on Wednesday December 27, 2023 @05:28PM (#64110317)

    *rolls eyes*

  • My nose bleeds in sympathy that Mrs Sunak will have less income she is supposed to declare to HMRC.

  • I'm okay with this and any other foreign business Infosys or other India tech contracting companies lose. I had direct experience with Infosys in 2010 and their developers and services were subpar to say the least.

    • by keltor ( 99721 ) *
      Other than a few tiny white glove services, all IT consulting organizations have India employees at this point, almost all of them have FIlipino BPO operations and almost all of them have Chinese employees as well. It's impossible for them to have enough employees otherwise.
      • AI will resolve the issue of skills shortages
        • Totally! "Oh wise supercomputer, I've killed the ambitions of my potential peers. Let's be like Loki! With our powers combined...! We are... Dave? Dave?"
        • AI will relieve skills shortages just like power tools made carpenters obsolete, or combines made people laboring in fields obsolete. Yes, some people are jettisoned and there are fewer jobs, but not everything is wiped clean.

          AI when it comes to system administration can make mistakes. And in a lot of companies, those mistakes will make auditors very unhappy, perhaps jeopardize contracts, as AI is still an unproven technology with no way to figure out how it decided to do something.

          Programming, AI turns a

    • Yes. Subpar only describes the good ones though.

      These consulting companies sell what they don't have to upper management who don't understand any of it.

  • by Virtucon ( 127420 ) on Wednesday December 27, 2023 @05:44PM (#64110355)

    Infosys et al. represent the worst in terms of IT outsourcing. They'll promise the moon they quickly try and "train up" incompetent, underpaid staff "offshore" to fulfill the contract. Companies that outsource without holding any outsourcing firm accountable for delivery and quality deserve what they get.

    • Yeah but they're cheap. If you're a scammy Wheeler and dealer who just wants to spin up a business soak up a bunch of money from rich people and then disappear Infosys is a perfect solution. There's hundreds of billions of dollars in venture Capital out there because AI has the possibility to replace so many jobs. It's basically an entirely new form of capital and the people who own it are going to be the next Mark Zuckerberg or Elon musk's. And it doesn't require the slightest bit of competency or skill to
    • by mjwx ( 966435 )

      Infosys et al. represent the worst in terms of IT outsourcing. They'll promise the moon they quickly try and "train up" incompetent, underpaid staff "offshore" to fulfill the contract. Companies that outsource without holding any outsourcing firm accountable for delivery and quality deserve what they get.

      What does "train up" mean where you're from?

      In my experience they'll just find someone with fake certs and tell you they're trained... then let you find out the hard way.

  • I recently went through a couple hundred resumes for a job we'd posted. A significant percentage of them were Indians who all basically had an absurdly similar (and very narrow) skill set. It made me wonder if the big outsourcing outfits over there have been drawing down.

    • That is how the "body shops" seem to work. They get a lot of people who can "turn a crank", be it debug PHP, poke at node.js, and do some narrowly focused developer work, or maybe go do Windows based IT stuff, following a best practice guide. The real good people wind up going elsewhere, leaving the mediocre people remaining, who eventually get let go, or maybe thrown at another project.

      From what I see, anything that requires "lock-step" stuff, like methodically doing code or following a STIG or script, e

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