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?