BANGALORE, INDIA: Emirates Group is said to have taken back the three-years deal from Infosys Technologies on mutual understanding between the two parties.
CIOL has learned from the sources close to the contract that early March 2010, Mercator, the Dubai-based business technology provider and Emirates Group subsidiary pulled off the project from Infosys Technology, because of delay in building the modules for the client.
This project has most likely moved to either TCS or Microsoft.
According to information that CIOL has, Infosys was supposed to submit the first module of the application within three months, which got delayed by six months. This further hindered the development of preceding modules leading to Mercator's ire. Furthermore, Infosys had asked for an extension of the deadline of the first release of the application till March 2011, but the release date provided was August, 2009.
The spokesperson at Infosys, TCS and Microsoft, however declined to comment calling it a market speculation.
From their (Infosys) side, the IT major requested the client about incapability to deliver the module in the short span. The contract was roughly worth Rs 90 crore. It involved a team of some 60-70 employees, based in Chennai. It is said that a special team was sent from Bangalore to work on the design.
An Industry analyst shared that loosing a client is a normal scenario. Usually, in order to get a project, companies tend to bid at lower Service Level Agreement (SLA) rates. Later on during the implementation stage, lower rates forces them (companies) to confine the teams strength. The analyst opined that it is a responsible approach to keep the client in communication and let him go, if delivery seems difficult.
Infosys got this deal to establish an Offshore Development Center in November 2008. This center, located at the Infosys campus in Chennai, was supposed to develop and maintain systems to support business-critical functions for its (Emirates) customers worldwide.
Infosys had clearly mentioned in the annual reports that it has lost 4 active clients over the year. It added 141 clients during the fiscal year that ended March 2010, as against an addition of 156 clients in the previous fiscal.
(Imagine you are Infosys CEO, would you have preferred to walk out of the project which you started? Do you think such acts will decrease clients' confidence in your company? Is Infosys too big to meet with this kind of a failure which is apparently a result of low bidding done to ward off competition and keep a client?)