Wipro, TCS bag major IT services contracts

Two of India's IT bellweather companies Tata Consultancy Services and Wipro bagged contracts from major agencies. Wipro Ltd, India's No. 3 outsourcing company, said on Wednesday it had won a three-year IT services contract from Aquarion Water Company, one of the largest water utilities in the United States.

Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) on the other hand has won India's largest state-wide area network (SWAN) project from the Andhra Pradesh government.

Financial details of the Wipro deal were not disclosed. TCS' five-year project is based on a build, own, operate and transfer (BOOT) model. "This is the fourth SWAN project TCS has bagged in a row," said a company statement here Wednesday.

It is now implementing SWAN projects in Chhattisgarh, Tamil Nadu, and Bihar.

The proposed SWAN project will enable the state government to start and run various e-governance projects and citizen services. The project would be rolled out in 12 months and TCS will then maintain it for five years.

"We are happy to partner with TCS for this project. This is yet another initiative of the state government to take a wide array of services to the common man," said Sameer Sharma, secretary and chairman of Andhra Pradesh Technology Services.

The project envisages connecting state headquarters with 1,088 sub-divisions and 23 district headquarters.

Once the project is commissioned, the network will enable the state to have video-conferencing facility across government offices and enable them to communicate and conference with each other over VoIP (voice over IP) phones, which will reduce the government's phone bills considerably.

Various e-governance applications like RTO, healthcare, education, municipality would also ride on this network backbone, said Sanjay Kumar, managing director of Andhra Pradesh Technology Services.