We had the opportunity to attend Infosys’ Confluence event in San Francisco, held from April 27th to 29th at the Hilton Union Square. The conference was well attended with over 1500 participants, coming from customers, prospects and the ecosystem, a surge by 50+% over last year. 
 
Have a look at my top three takeaways of the event here:

 
 
 
No time to watch – here is the 1-2 slide condensation:
 

Want to read on? Here you go: 

Always tough to pick the takeaways – but here are my Top 3:

ZeroDistance – Bringing people closer to technology, and positioning Infosys as the enabler for zero distance between people is a worthy goal and was well received. The other two dimensions to ZeroDistance are the end users and the code of the solutions that are to be built. Amongst the common drivers (technology, education), ‘extreme disintermediation’ was the one that stuck out for me. I think Infosys articulated that well, but did not mention the elephant in the room when it comes to disintermediation, DLT aka Blockchain.

Mana – Infosys launched a new offering, Mana, for now squarely focused at improving its internal processes, while drinking its own champagne. The champagne brand is IIP – aka Infosys Information platform – (and with that AiKiDo) that the provider uses to improve efficiency (doing things right) and effectiveness (doing the right thing) for its largest employee population group – L3 support consultants. Infosys sees Mana as a knowledge based AI platform, for now it’s a great internal showcase looking at the digital exhaust of IT support work – and then come up with faster, better, more automated resolutions.

Product Progress – The ‘Platform’ family (IIP, IAP, and IKP) is making good progress, with currently 220 engagements and 17 live customers. The ATP statistics work is being done with IIP and it was showcased widely and proudly at Confluence. On the Edge family side (TradeEdge, CreditEdge, ProcureEdge and AssistEdge) Infosys is doing well, too – with now over 60 customers live and doubled revenue.


Also please take a look at the video colleagues Alan Lepofsky, Doug Henschen and me recorded after Day #1 of Confluence - here.

MyPOV

A good event for Infosys, that is showing how it works both at regaining momentum and changing the service provider landscape, with building more IP and products, all the way that Sikka mentioned that the future in services is the combination of software and people. The good news is that Infosys now has the chops to provide it and has created a great internal showcase with Mana. It is clear the executive team has thought this through, as a move to services lowers the cost of service overall, makes people more productive and enables them to server more accounts.

On the concern side Infosys is in the middle of a transformation that it needs to pass and come out stronger at the end. To become more agile the provider is flattening the organization, a rather unique and for most service providers unique re-organizational process. Changing a hierarchical organization to a flatter one is never trivial. But to be fair – there is no alternative to this transformation given the course Sikka has set for Infosys.

Overall a good Confluence for Infosys, that is changing ever slightly but determined from a ‘people only’ to a ‘software and people’ model. We will be watching.

Want to learn more? Checkout the Storify collection below. 

More on Infosys:
 
  • Progress Report - Infosys Analyst Meeting - Can you transform customers while you transform yourself? Looks like it - read here

Find more coverage on the Constellation Research website here and checkout my magazine on Flipboard and my YouTube channel here.