US-based Unisys Corporation is making a re-entry into India following its tie-up with Allied Digital Services (ADS). Unisys India offers its global clients end-to-end IT services, including business process outsourcing (BPO), information technology outsourcing (ITO) and technical help desk support, as well as software development and maintenance. 

Unisys is a global service provider for companies like British Telecom and Dell. In India it will now provide service to its clients through ADS. “We were working with Unisys for over a year so that we could gear up our own infrastructure to offer the kind of support they had assured their clients. Now that we have imbibed all their processes internally, we will act as its service provider in India,” said Nitin Shah, MD, ADS.

The Mumbai-based solution provider will develop the market for Unisys, especially in the enterprise segment. It has already bid for a project where it will deploy SAP user licenses on 20,000 servers. ADS expects the Unisys-based business (most of which will be enabling service to and on behalf of Dell in India) to chip in 30% to its overall service revenue in 2005-06. 

“We want to get into the service delivery value chain, which leverage on network operated center (NOC) based support. This is cost-effective for most overseas clients, and we have the necessary skillsets to offer this service to them,” noted Nitin. 

Unisys gamut of services includes systems integration, consultancy, infrastructure management, outsourcing and providing high-end server technology for key verticals like financial services, public sector, communications, transportation, commercial and media institutions. In most cases, its business in India will be an extension of its global agreements with clients in these verticals. 

It was earlier present in India with its partnership with Tata Infotech and the latter was called Tata Unisys till 1997, when Unisys divested its shareholding to the Tata Group. Unisys long absence in the country does give rise to several questions now, when the company is making a concentrated effort to enter the marketplace again. ADS is shouldering the responsibility of assuring clients that the reason Unisys took its time to re-enter the business was to ensure that it had the service delivery system in place first.

Said Bimal Raj, CEO, ADS, “Unisys wanted to get its act right, so it made sure that its service partner had people trained on its technologies and processes extensively, before going to market with its offerings. This is because the company lays heavy onus on service level agreements.”

Though ADS is present in Yemen and Sri Lanka, it does not have any plans to extend its partnership with Unisys in these geographies. “We want to take it one region at a time,” explained Bimal.

VINITA BHATIA

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