Infosys' offices in Bangalore. Photo credit: Ashwin Kumar/Flickr.

Infosys, a provider of technology-enabled business solutions for Global 2000 companies, has boosted its cloud drive by announcing it is to become a Microsoft partner.

The India-headquartered company will be integrating Microsoft’s cloud computing platform, Windows Azure, into its business solutions to help improve the process management services – such as offsite customer relationship management, finance and accounting, and administration and sales order processing – of its customers, which are located in over 30 countries.

Infosys, founded in 1981, acts as a consulting service – it establishes how clients can improve their services by transforming their IT infrastructure. Through this partnership it will use Microsoft’s Azure platform, Office 365 application suite and private cloud to provide customers with cloud-based services and solutions.

The company promotes itself on its transparency and accountability, comparing itself to a ‘glass box’. This deal will combine its understanding of what businesses want with Microsoft's technologies to offer a start-to-finish service, based in the cloud.

Vishnu Bhat, head of cloud at Infosys, said: “We have seen a change in the tone of discussions in the past six months. We used to hear questions like: is cloud just a buzz? Is it secure? Will it stand its ground? But now discussions are different and customers now want to do it.

“About 60 per cent of applications at enterprises are likely to be in the cloud in the next five years. This will be a combination of public, private and hybrid clouds.”