
Patni to provide systems integration and support services...
By Andy McCue
Published: 18 October 2007 11:35 BST
Mobile phone retailer Carphone Warehouse has signed a $200m five-year deal with Indian IT company Patni.
The deal is an extension of an existing four year relationship between the two companies and covers a range of services including application development and maintenance and systems integration.
Carphone Warehouse CTO, Simon Post, told silicon.com Patni will do offshore support and maintenance and onshore application development.
He said: "It is quite large systems integration stuff and a broad spectrum of services and architectural work."
Special Report: Inside India
In February silicon.com's Steve Ranger visited the Indian tech hotspots of Bangalore, Mumbai, Pune and Hyderabad. Click on the links below to see photo galleries of the cities and companies visited.
♦ Satyam's IT campus
♦ Hyderabad's tech parks
♦ Bringing tech to rural India
♦ High-tech on the streets of Pune
♦ Pune - the new Bangalore?
♦ Boom town Bangalore
♦ Bangalore's Electronics City
♦ SAP and Wipro in Bangalore
Patni is one of Carphone Warehouse's biggest IT suppliers and already works on the company's CRM system and runs some legacy applications offshore.
Post said aside from the obvious cost-benefit of using offshore services the deal also gives his IT department more flexibility in terms of tapping into resources.
He said: "Carphone Warehouse is a business that has changed an enormous amount over the last few years and it is quite difficult for us as an IT department to see what our business will look like in two years. We are trying to build very flexible IT systems that can rapidly change for when Charles Dunstone [Carphone Warehouse CEO] has his next great idea and gives me two days' notice."
The high cost of hiring UK IT contractors is also an issue. "If I need 15 Java people suddenly, I don't need to go to the UK contractor market where I would get nailed," he said.
Post said the deal is primarily about bringing the two companies closer together and Patni will also help Carphone Warehouse develop next-generation systems for its global telecoms and retail operations.
In the central ISE group there are 349 people (of which 191 are onsite in Europe and 158 are offshore in Turkey and India). Specific Job Requirements ...
Are you a project Manager with experience of Supply Chain and warehouse management? They house an AS400 system that controls the supply chain and ...
Campaign Management - Lead & Opportunity Management - Account / Subscription Management - Customer Interaction Management - Order Management - ...
CIO Agenda 2008
The exclusive silicon.com CIO Agenda 2008 survey looks at the CIO's tech shopping list for the year, examines whether IT budgets are rising or falling and reveals what the pain points are for tech chiefs this year. Find out more in our latest special report.
Stories from the web...
Copyright ©1995-2008 CNET Networks, Inc. All rights reserved. Top of page
silicon.com Dear silicon.com... outsource vs insource, Naked CIO on open source, password overload… Reader Comments of the Week
silicon.com Dear silicon.com... iPlayer vs ISPs, rip off outsourcing, social networking… Reader Comments of the Week