TEANECK, N.J. and BUDAPEST, Hungary, Oct. 7 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Cognizant (Nasdaq: CTSH), a leading provider of global consulting, technology and business process services, announced today the opening of its delivery center in Budapest, Hungary.

The new center will support Cognizant's European customers with near-shore services in a similar time zone, leverage techno-functional and multilingual capabilities available in the region to service the IT and business process outsourcing (BPO) needs of Global 2000 companies, and provide a base with deep local insights for Cognizant to service customers in Central and Eastern Europe.

Cognizant's association with Budapest commenced earlier this year with Clinical Data Management (CDM) services to AstraZeneca, one of the world's largest pharmaceutical companies, widely recognized for its life-changing medicines. In addition to AstraZeneca, the new Budapest delivery center provides application development and maintenance services to a leading consumer products goods manufacturer, and system architecture and quality assurance services to a re-insurance firm.

Eric Terhaerdt, VP of AstraZeneca's Clinical US operations said: 'We're pleased to be working with Cognizant, whose data management operations in Budapest will ensure our global teams can share best practice and help us to continue to achieve the highest quality clinical data results.'

Like all of Cognizant's delivery centers, the Budapest facility will leverage Cognizant 2.0, a Web 2.0-based platform that enables Cognizant resources worldwide to virtually collaborate and deliver significant time-to-market, cost and transformational value to clients.

'Our delivery center in Hungary is part of our endeavor to offer clients strong local relationship management with robust global services capabilities,' said Francisco D'Souza, president and CEO of Cognizant. 'Our investments in newer global, regional and local delivery centers will help our clients seamlessly harness optimal talent globally while meeting their requirements and risk preferences as well as provide business continuity.