Infosys Tech To Design Wings For Airbus

Aircraft maker Airbus Industrie has hired Infosys Technologies for wing design. "Infosys is focusing on avionics domain as a high priority area," Infosys Technologies' senior vice-president M S S Prabhu said.

Prabhu said Infosys' avionics group has already started began working the project and expects to do more for the aircraft maker.

The avionics group is part of the Infosys' engineering services consulting practice (ESCP) group.

It was set up recently to target global leaders in the avionics business, and comprises professionals and senior industry consultants.

The engineering services' consulting practice builds life critical-embedded software for some of the world's leaders in avionics, automotive, defence systems and medical electronics.

Prabhu said the challenge lies in providing predictable, affordable, maintainable, high integrity software. "The software we provide for the avionics industry has to be safe and reliable," Prabhu said. He said software has become the driving element in development and modernisation of civil and military avionics systems.

The engineering service contributed 2.9 per cent of the revenues during the quarter ending December 31, 2001, up from 1.6 per cent during the same period last year.

Prabhu said ESCP focuses on satisfying the immediate needs of clients in markets such as automotive, aerospace and high-tech manufacturing by building a team of individuals in the field of cross-platform integration.

Prabhu said two of the most important features that separate life critical software from other software are reliability and predictability. Prabhu said Infosys adopts techniques such as failure modes and effects analysis to improve the reliability of the software products.

Predictability is the ability of a software to behave in predictable manner. Prabhu said Infosys' association in building such software has enabled their clients to extend their technical and managerial capabilities, reduced the time to market leading to decrease in total cost of ownership.

Prabhu said the main focus of the avionics group is to ensure that it is well rounded in both software and hardware to provide the clients with the following capabilities: mission computers, flight control and management systems, navigation systems and air traffic management.