BANGALORE: The Indian outfits of ABB and IBM signed a strategic agreement
today. According to this agreement, IBM India will take responsibility for the
quality, performance and delivery of ABB India’s IT services. This includes
handling of ABB’s infrastructure, managing and operating the data center,
providing end user support, overall network management, disaster recovery
services and technical support of business applications.
Although the value of the contract was not disclosed, IBM India managing
director, Abraham Thomas said, its very significant for IBM in India and its
time duration exceeds five years. As part of the contract IBM India will absorb
about 46 members of the 50 member ABB IT team, while the rest will remain as ABB’s
IT team involved in more strategic planning for ABB. According to IBM officials,
the company will engage a total of 50 to 60 members in the contract.
"Our thrust is clearly on creating greater value for our customers by
leveraging our unparalleled `domain competence’ to deliver world class power
and automation technologies. Through this outsourcing partnership with IBM
India, we can concentrate more on our core businesses and pursue our overall
mission. It helps us gain operational efficiencies and allows us to remain at
the cutting edge of information technology. On the whole it’s a smarter way of
working," said ABB India, Managing Director, Ravi Uppal.