Tata Teleservices: IT's All in the Family

Bharti's IT outsourcing deal with IBM in early 2004 had given rise to the

speculation that other telcos would soon follow suit. However, nothing happened

till last month, when Tata Teleservices (TTSL) finally took the IT outsourcing

plunge-in some ways, the arrangement has been kept within the family. In a

deal estimated at over Rs 1,000 crore and spread over five years, TCS has been

given the responsibility of managing the IT infrastructure of both TTSL and Tata

Teleservices (Maharashtra).

The scope of the engagement includes management of all IT-related activities

including implementation, application development, and maintenance as well as

change management across the enterprise. In addition, management of data

centers, information security management, training end users on new

applications, disaster recovery (DR) and business continuity (BC) will also be

the responsibility of TCS as part of the strategic engagement. Darryl Green,

CEO, Tata Teleservices hopes that the partnership would provide a comprehensive

IT roadmap for TTSL with a state-of-the-art infrastructure to support existing

and new business initiatives.

TCS will be deploying an IT framework offering TTSL the flexibility to

introduce the latest in voice, data, and content-based services to its

customers. TCS head honcho S Ramadorai feels that the scalable, adaptable IT

architecture will allow TTSL to quickly respond to changes in technology to

enhance customer experience. In many ways, this deal has similar connotations to

the Bharti-IBM arrangement. TTSL, present today in 20 circles, is poised for a

significant scale up just like Bharti was in early 2004. The Rs 1,000 crore

question now is: can TCS match up with IBM?