Infy, Wipro in a joint bid to make Vijaya IT-savvy

Vijaya Bank has announced the launch of its core banking solution initiative in collaboration with Infosys and Wipro.

The bank will deploy Finacle banking solution from Infosys, while Wipro will be the systems integration partner.

The bank has handed over this project to Infosys and Wipro on a turn-key basis at an overall cost of Rs 90 crore. The implementation work will go on till March 2006.

"We are delighted with Infosys and Wipro being our partners for implementing this mission-critical initiative. This is the first of the several new business and technology initiatives that Vijaya Bank plans to announce in the coming months," M S Kapur, chairman and managing director, Vijaya Bank, said. With this initiative, the bank can provide additional services such as tele-banking and anti-money laundering.

"Our aim is to provide complete IT solutions that help our customers succeed in achieving their objective. The Vijaya Bank project is one such example," Azim Premji, chairman, Wipro Ltd, said.

After Union Bank of India and Oriental Bank of Commerce, this is the third joint win for Infosys and Wipro to provide similar services.

When asked whether this strategy to team up and pitch for a contract would continue in the long-term, both companies did not give a specific reply. However, the leaders of both companies showered praises on each other's capability.

N R Narayana Murthy, chairman and chief mentor, Infosys Technologies, said, "Infosys and Wipro are fierce competitors. We compete in an honourable and ethical way. We are proud of it. Infosys has played a key role in achieving business transformation for some of the most reputed banks in India. We believe that a good core banking solution, apart from being proven globally and offering a lower total cost of ownership, should enable the bank to gain business agility."

Vijaya Bank will begin with a pilot phase to bring 10 branches under Finacle. There will be nine such pilots, which will be followed by a cooling period to sort out problems that may emerge. This will be followed by taking all branches live with Finacle core banking platform.

In addition to these applications, Wipro will also provide relevant IT infrastructure comprising high availability servers to support these applications. It will also design and implement disaster recovery centre, a call centre and manage the IT infrastructure for an extended period.