Wipro completes data centre divestment with India leg closure

BENGALURU: Wipro said it has completed divestment of data centre operations to Ensono in India for $6 million on September 30.

The Bengaluru-headquartered software services exporter,which had in March this year announced divestment plan at a total consideration of $405 million across US, Germany and UK and India to US-based firm Ensono, completed divestment globally in June for $399 million.

“We had informed about the completion of divestment of Wipro Data Centre and Cloud Services, Inc., and data center business in Germany and UK to Ensono for a consideration of $ 399 million...As a further update, we would like to inform that the divestment of data center operations in India to Ensono has been completed on September 30, 2018,” said the company in a filing to the stock exchanges.

Wipro acquired hosted data centre business from Infocrossing over a decade ago.

The company had said it would unlock value by transitioning eight data centres and more than 900 employees of its hosted data center services business to Ensono.

Data centre business reported revenues of $241 million for FY16-17 (2.9 % of Wipro’s consolidated revenues for FY 16-17).

Wipro would also invest $ 55 million to pick up a minority stake in Ensono, the Illinois based hybrid cloud services provider.

Analysts see Wipro's move to divest from such a business timely since organizations are increasingly relying on a few large cloud infrastructure providers.