US pharma major renews deal with HCL

Bangalore, June 19 (IANS) Leading US-based Purdue Pharma has renewed its five-year-old IT and infrastructure management contract with the Indian software major HCL Technologies Ltd.

As part of the extended deal, HCL will extend the IT and infrastructure management of Purdue across its operations to data centre, virtualisation, backup transformation and product rollouts.

"We will deploy new systems and technologies to provide unified service aggregation and management across Purdue servers, network, messaging, database, storage and backup," the Noida-based company said in a statement Thursday.

HCL will also render service desk and remote desktop services for Purdue's offices across the US from its North Carolina centre, which delivers IT, infrastructure management and back office services to its global clients.

"Our partnership with HCL since 2010 has improved our ability to deliver cost-effective and innovative solutions to support our business," Purdue chief information officer Larry A. Pickett said on the occasion.

The partnership also helped Purdue to extend the contract to infrastructure managed services, service desk and security.

"Purdue recognises our efforts in taking the partnership beyond the contract to transform its IT infrastructure and help keep pace with changing business demands," HCL vice president Vinod Chandran said in the statement.

The California-based Purdue and its associated firms are engaged in research, development, production and distribution of both prescription and over-the-counter medicines and hospital products across the US.

The over two-decades-old HCL serves about 250 clients the world over and manages the IT infrastructure of four of top seven pharmacy firms worldwide, accounting for 30 percent of its export revenue.