Tata Tele in talks with PC makers

Adith Charlie

On August 22, 2009 on the Hindu Business Line at http://www.thehindubusinessline.com/2009/08/22/stories/2009082250720400.htm

Mumbai, Aug. 21 Tata Teleservices looks to partner with laptop and netbook makers for promoting its mobile broadband service, Photon, among buyers of new computers.

The Mumbai-based firm is currently in talks with companies such as Lenovo, HCL, Dell, Toshiba and others for the same.

“We are looking to sign up with laptop manufactures to see whether they can incorporate the Tata Photon as a purchase device along with their laptops and also give special offers on the same. The days of people buying a laptop without going in for connectivity options have clearly gone,” Mr Lloyd Mathias, President- Business Development, VAS & Chief Marketing Officer told Business Line.

Tata Tele already has a tie-up with Hewlett-Packard; consumers can get a Rs 3,500 Photon Plus for Rs 1,200 when they buy a HP/Compaq laptop.

The company is expected to sign up with at least two more laptop manufacturers in the next few months.

Datacom, Sistema to offer $300 mn IT deals

29 May 2009, 0008 hrs IST, Jessica Mehroin Irani & Ranjit Shinde, ET Bureau

MUMBAI: Datacom and Sistema Shyam TeleServices, two new entrants in the telecom space, have shortlisted Wipro, Tech Mahindra and IBM for an IT outsourcing contract of close to $150 million each. This is a boon for the IT service providers at a time when the slowdown has resulted in a drop in the number of books.

Videocon-promoted Datacom has received licences in all the 22 telecom circles in India and is in the process of launching its operations. “Yes, the three (IT vendors) have been shortlisted and are competing for the contract. The deal value has not been finalised,” said VN Dhoot, chairman of Videocon group.

Sistema Shyam TeleServices, a joint venture between Russia’s telecom giant Sistema and India’s Shyam group, is in the process of launching CDMA operations in 18 circles. Though the company did not confirm the names of IT firms, a source in the know said that it has invited bids from the three IT vendors mentioned earlier for IT infrastructure-related services in these circles. Sistema Shyam has recently launched operations in Kolkata taking its total number of active circles to four.

While IBM and Tech Mahindra declined to comment on the development, Wipro officials were unavailable for comment. On the exact structure of the contracts, it was not possible to ascertain that from Datacom. However, Sistema Shyam in an e-mail response, said that it would be a fixed value, short-term contract wherein the IT assets would not be obtained on a lease, but would be acquired by the telco. The scope of work broadly includes data centre construction, applications management services and infrastructure hardware supply and support.

Sistema-Shyam has already outsourced its IT requirements for its existing four circles. “Key vendors, who are working on our various IT projects, are Sitronics, Tech Mahindra, IBM, HP, Wipro and Oracle. Since our IT is based on a centralised model, the projects are uniform for all circles and are not taken separately,” CEO Vsevolod Rozanov told ET.

The new domestic telecom operators have kept the order book running for IT companies that have been hit by the slowdown. Earlier, Wipro had bagged a large full IT outsourcing project from Unitech Wireless worth approximately Rs 2,500 crore over a nine-year period. Most of the new service providers are expected to launch their services in the next 12 months. “We expect operators, such as Unitech, Swan and Datacom to commence by July 2010 given the regulatory pressures,” said India Infoline’s telecom analyst Bhavesh Gandhi.

Excerpt from interview with Neelam Dhawan, Managing Director, Hewlett-Packard India

On www.business-standard.com/india on 19 May 2009

What about telecom? It appears that IBM is a clear leader in this space…

When Indian telecom companies went for outsourcing services, the deals went to IBM. It has a model which we could never match but we have products in both hardware and software that are used internally for billing purposes. These are solutions that HP has continued to sell in the country and that’s helping us grow. Now that the government has announced licences for five new operators, we are very excited. They will need infrastructure. And we have developed new ways of designing data centres with cooling and power efficiency. Take, for instance, our dynamic smart cooling solutions. Data centres must have air-conditioning which costs a bomb. Dynamic cooling reduces costs by sensing hot spots and cooling them rather than cooling the entire data centre. This reduces air-conditioning costs by 40-45 per cent. Some telecom companies have already given us orders which we executed in December, March and April.

But you appear to have woken up late when it comes to low-cost netbooks and the mobile space which is booming…

To think that PCs will be the device that will be used to access information is erroneous. Mobile is surely the way to go. However, our focus is not to make a mobile device. Rather, our focus is on how the mobile device can become the centre of computing. Whether you want to access your bank or make a secure payment, security is a big issue. Consider a streaming video-on-demand or direct-to-home (DTH) broadcast or any Visa/Mastercard transaction — all these applications link back to storage or server applications. The question, however, is how do you enable all this in a secure environment? So our focus is on secure transactions using the phone.

Every time you see a reality show where you need to SMS a number, there is a server doing the backend work — and 90 per cent of those servers are from HP. I have 130 organisations that do value-added services for telecom service providers using our product.I must now come to netbooks. Let me tell you that we launched netbooks in February. A little late though, we launched consumer and commercial netbooks. We also got the consumer netbooks designed and offered them in different colours. They also have a slot for a 3G simcard. Netbooks are doing well for us. February was a record month for us.

Excerpt from interview with Neelam Dhawan, Managing Director, Hewlett-Packard India

On www.business-standard.com/india on 19 May 2009

What about telecom? It appears that IBM is a clear leader in this space…

When Indian telecom companies went for outsourcing services, the deals went to IBM. It has a model which we could never match but we have products in both hardware and software that are used internally for billing purposes. These are solutions that HP has continued to sell in the country and that’s helping us grow. Now that the government has announced licences for five new operators, we are very excited. They will need infrastructure. And we have developed new ways of designing data centres with cooling and power efficiency. Take, for instance, our dynamic smart cooling solutions. Data centres must have air-conditioning which costs a bomb. Dynamic cooling reduces costs by sensing hot spots and cooling them rather than cooling the entire data centre. This reduces air-conditioning costs by 40-45 per cent. Some telecom companies have already given us orders which we executed in December, March and April.

But you appear to have woken up late when it comes to low-cost netbooks and the mobile space which is booming…

To think that PCs will be the device that will be used to access information is erroneous. Mobile is surely the way to go. However, our focus is not to make a mobile device. Rather, our focus is on how the mobile device can become the centre of computing. Whether you want to access your bank or make a secure payment, security is a big issue. Consider a streaming video-on-demand or direct-to-home (DTH) broadcast or any Visa/Mastercard transaction — all these applications link back to storage or server applications. The question, however, is how do you enable all this in a secure environment? So our focus is on secure transactions using the phone.

Every time you see a reality show where you need to SMS a number, there is a server doing the backend work — and 90 per cent of those servers are from HP. I have 130 organisations that do value-added services for telecom service providers using our product.I must now come to netbooks.

Let me tell you that we launched netbooks in February. A little late though, we launched consumer and commercial netbooks. We also got the consumer netbooks designed and offered them in different colours. They also have a slot for a 3G simcard. Netbooks are doing well for us. February was a record month for us.