Patni Computer Services in $ 6 mn plan

Patni Computer Systems, the sixth largest IT services exporter, plans to invest $6 million for providing enhanced infrastructure management services (IMS) from its facilities in the US and India.

The company is entering into an original equipment agreement with US-based InteQ, a remote network management service software provider.

The alliance will enable Patni to offer a complete suite of service offerings, comprising remote monitoring, web-enabled service desk, performance reporting and problem resolution, apart from strengthening its position in the global IMS market.

With this, Patni would become one of the few Indian IT services companies to deliver IMS with both onshore and offshore functionality and resources, he added.

The IMS market is estimated to reach $19.5 billion by 2007 according to International Data Centre (IDC). Globally, IMS is an $80 billion plus market, dominated by information technology service majors such as IBM, according to a recent report by Deutsche Bank.

Lehman Brothers, Farmer Insurance, AMD, Toshiba, Thames Water, Nike and NCR have already began outsourcing. Patni will deploy close to 280 employees on this project, with 70 per cent of the employees on site work.

"Leveraging the strength of both company, Patni will offer more compelling value proposition to provide increased utilisation of clients' existing IT assets, enhance their staff productivity and significantly reduce managing IT infrastructure," Patni's senior vice-president Satish Joshi said.

"The investment is to enhance our IMS technology and infrastructure, which would help in improving services and expanding our reach into us and European countries," he added.

A majority of the investment would be used to set up two IMS command centres, one each in Mumbai and in the US, he said, adding the Mumbai centre would be located at its existing facility in Seepz in Mumbai while the US one is slated to be in Massachusetts.