ABB India: Global Marriage, Indian Party

Another early deal was that of ABB's with IBM India in 2002. The
significance lies in that it was an extension of the global arrangement between
the two. This global contract envisaged a 10-year agreement to outsource close
to 90% of ABB's information systems infrastructure operations, including the
transfer of more than 1,200 employees to IBM.

The agreement, pegged at $1.1 bn, included pilot contracts in Sweden and
India valued at $600 mn; the full value of the relationship is expected to
approach $1.7 bn over ten years.

As part of the pilot contract, IBM India took responsibility for the
performance, maintenance, delivery and quality of ABB India's IT services.
This included handling ABB's sophisticated in-house IT infrastructure,
managing and operating the data center, providing end-user support, overall
network management, DR services, technical support of business applications, and
continuous updating of IT infrastructure.

The ABB-IBM Marriage

• The duo has devised a concept dubbed "On-Demand
  Connectivity", which aims to mitigate risk for integrating the plant
  floor with enterprise applications.

• ABB's Industrial IT Extended Automation System 800xA, a process control
  platform, incorporated IBM's WebSphere Enterprise Service Bus (ESB), a
  messaging middleware that enables connectivity across applications and
  integration, with web service-based ERP applications.