Global IT services provider HCL Technologies Ltd (HCL) and Xerox have announced a six-year data center outsourcing and transformation agreement.

The contract, reported by the Wall Street Journal as worth US$100 million, focuses upon mid-range services, business continuity and disaster recovery for Xerox's information management operations. According to a Xerox spokesman, India's HCL will manage data center hosting and migration, virtualisation, consolidation and storage architecture services across North America and Europe, with the additional provision of architecture and consulting services for new technology and system design, adoption and lifecycle improvement.

HCL will use its Business Service Management process to centralise and standardise Xerox's data centers' infrastructure. The engagement will also leverage HCL's unique "zero-business" disruption based transition framework to ensure an accelerated risk-free transition across distributed regional data centers.

"Data center environments are the heart of our business operations and we look to partner with companies that can manage our centers and take them to the next level," said John McDermott, chief information officer, Xerox.

R Srikrishna, senior vice president, North America, HCL Technologies ISD, said:"HCL has a unique approach to IT Infrastructure Management and Transformation that offers our customers enhanced value in the short-term as well as over the life of the relationship. This engagement is a significant milestone for HCL and further enhances our credibility for managing complex, multi-regional data centers."

HCL pioneered the concept of Remote Infrastructure Management (RIM) with a co-sourcing engagement model. The company currently manages more than 800,000 mission critical devices systems and supports 500,000 business users.