Sundar Viswanathan is a Senior Director Analyst at Gartner in the IT Leaders Sourcing, Procurement and Vendor Management team, with over 25 years of experience in the IT industry. He advises clients on sourcing strategies for AI, Data & Analytics, Consulting, and Enterprise Applications (specifically SaaS based systems). Sundar specializes in helping organizations optimize their sourcing and vendor management practices to enable digital and AI-driven transformation. His expertise spans provider selection, RFP management, pricing and contracting best practices, negotiation strategies, and risk governance. He also guides clients on global delivery models, onshore/offshore strategies, and vendor go-to-market validation.
With deep knowledge in IT services, Sundar helps IT and business leaders align sourcing decisions with strategic objectives, ensuring value realization, cost optimization, and risk mitigation in complex, large-scale initiatives.
Prior to Gartner, Sundar was the Head of Emerging Technologies & Innovation and CTO for Public Sector industry vertical at Fujitsu Oceania, responsible for enabling public sector organizations to deliver transformative citizen experiences leveraging emerging technologies (specifically AI and IoT). In a career spanning over three decades, Sundar delivered IT globalization and sourcing advisory for Fortune 500 companies (across manufacturing, pharmaceuticals, industrial engineering verticals), developed competitive go to market offerings and strategy for IT services portfolio, led the IT sourcing strategy and IT vendor management for Supervalu and program managed TESCOs Oracle Retail implementation and IT applications support for a portfolio of business applications.
Fujitsu, CTO for Public Sector and Head of Emerging Technologies, 5 years
Supervalu, Strategic Sourcing, vendor management, Global IT Shared Services strategy , 2 years
Tech Mahindra, Multiple across 2 stints (Delivery to Go-To-Market), Head of IES ANZ, 7 years
TESCO, IT applications support portfolio management (Application Services), Sourcing Tr, 4 years
Zinnov Management Consulting, Globalisation & Sourcing advisory, Vendor assessment, IT Shared Service Centers, 5 years
IT Contracts Negotiations
IT Vendor Portfolio Management
Technology Innovation and Strategy Leadership
IT Sourcing, Procurement and Vendor Management Operating Model
IT Sourcing Strategy Development and Execution
Post-graduate qualification
Certificate in Retail Management & Indian Institute of Management, Bangalore and TESCO
Certificate in Business Management & Indian Institute of Management, Calcutta, India
Bachelor of Engineering & Computer Science Engineering, Bharathiar University, India
How to develop and execute sourcing strategy (insourcing/outsourcing/offshoring) for IT applications solutions and services?
How to develop and execute sourcing strategy (insourcing/outsourcing/offshoring) for Data and Analytics and AI services?
Best practices in selecting, contracting and managing ERP, CRM and HCM implementation and support service providers / system integrators (On-prem and SaaS)
Best practices in selecting SaaS solution implementation providers and ongoing support for SaaS based business applications
Best practices in contracting, establishing and managing SLAs and penalties, governance and innovation for application services