By Vivian Yeo
Friday, November 10 2006 06:34 PM
URL: http://www.zdnetasia.com/news/business/0,39044229,61966261,00.htm

Qantas Airways has awarded an outsourcing project worth A$191 million (US$146.6 million) over seven years to two Indian IT services providers--Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) and Satyam Computer Services.

The bulk of the share, or A$120 million (US$92.1 million), goes to TCS, according to a statement released Thursday by the Indian company. The contract is believed to be the largest single contract to date awarded to an Indian IT services provider in Australia.

TCS noted that under its share of Qantas' application services and transformation outsourcing program, it will provide support and maintenance to all of the airline's "key IT applications for airport operations and commercial systems".

Girija Pande, executive vice president and head of Asia-Pacific at TCS, told ZDNet Asia in an e-mail that as many as 220 employees would work on the Qantas project. The company will also base a number of airline technology systems experts in Australia over the course of the partnership.

Qantas is also expected to benefit from TCS' newly-set up innovation center in Chennai for the travel and hospitality industry. Launched last week, the facility develops, tests and pilots new applications using technologies such as radio frequency identification (RFID).

Separately, Satyam announced that it would provide application development and maintenance services for over 150 applications for the airline. The company said that Qantas had held an "extensive" review over 12 months "of its information technology applications development, support and maintenance functions" before making the commitment.

According to TCS' Pande, IBM and Infosys were also contenders for the Qantas contract.

In 2004, Qantas awarded also a seven-year deal worth A$750 million (US$575.7 million) to Telstra to manage its voice, desktop and network services, and a A$650 million (US$498.9 million) 10-year contract to IBM that covered data center, applications, mainframe and cross-functional services.