VSNL plans global managed services

Internet and telephony major Videsh Sanchar Nigam Ltd (VSNL) is gearing up to provide India-centric managed services to international customers, leveraging the global presence and network of its recently acquired companies.

The Tata group company is also expecting to close the acquisition of Teleglobe by the end of January 2006 or early February, which will be accrual to its revenues in the next financial year.

"We are implementing a comprehensive strategy aimed at addressing the managed services needs of global enterprises and intends to host service delivery and operations from India. This will help us in utilising the large talent pool available in the country, entailing a lower cost base," VSNL Head (Corporate Strategy) Srinivasa Addepalli told reporters here today.

The company is looking at delivery of managed services from its delivery centre in Chennai and applications to be hosted initially from Singapore, London and New York.

VSNL has already deployed a large team of IT and application specialists, who would be working closely with other Tata group companies like Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) and CMC.

VSNL's managed services would be mainly designed around four categories, managed network services, hosted services embedded in the network, managed hosted services independent of the network and customised solutions. The core business areas would be wholesale voice and data, enterprise data, retail broadband and value-added services.

The international managed services operations would be conducted through VSNL International, which has a global presence with operations in US.

VSNL will use the network and infrastructure of its subsidiaries, Tyco Global Network (TGN) and Teleglobe, which were acquired in 2004 and 2005, respectively. Teleglobe has presence in over 240 regions across the world and TGN has a 60,000 km optical fibre network spread across three continents.

This move will result in a quantum leap in revenues for the company, with VSNL expecting to post a hike from the $757 million posted in the financial year 2005. He, however, did not divulge the quantum of increase in revenues expected after extending its managed services to international arena.

Meanwhile, Addepalli also said that VSNL expects to complete the acquisition of Teleglobe, which was announced in July this year for $239 million. The company has recorded revenues of around $1.1 billion and has recorded transmission of over 13 billion minutes during the last financial year.