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(From right) Mr J. Avinash, President, Hosting Services, with Mr Parag Amalnerkar, Senior Product Manager, Satyam Infoway Ltd, at a press conference in Chennai on Thursday.

CHENNAI, June 13

SATYAMHOSTING from Satyam Infoway Ltd (Sify) plans to forge strategic alliances with some of the US firms including Digex Inc, Qwest and Level 3 to jointly offer hosting services.

The company has similar alliances with two German firms and a Singapore-based telecom firm, Mr J Avinash, President, Hosting Services, Satyam Infoway, told reporters here on Thursday.

Through the alliances, Sify would help Indian customers to host services in the US, while the partners would assist the US clients access the Indian markets, he said. Reverse migration of Indian companies currently hosted in the US as well as new Internet initiatives both in India and globally considering India as a hosting destination of choice was a trend likely to emerge soon, he added.

According to Mr Parag Amalnerkar, Senior Product Manager, Sify, the alliances were expected to materialise before September. The alliance with Digex was likely to be within this month, he said. The alliance would also enable Indian clients access to outsourcing disaster recovery services in the US through the partners, and vice versa, he added.

Mr Avinash said with Bharti's i2i undersea cable landing in the city, the bandwidth cost was likely to come down by one third - VSNL offers 1 MBPS for Rs 70 lakh per year. This in turn would help the company's Internet Data Centre (IDC) at Tidel Park to offer hosting services at a competitive price, he added.

Currently, Sify sources about 70 MBPS of bandwidth from VSNL, 100-120 MBPS of satellite bandwidth, 28-30 mbps from IPLC (integrated private leased circuit). This combination was likely to change, with Sify planning to source a major portion of its bandwidth requirement from Bharti, he said. "We have not finalised the volume, which would depend on the pricing Bharti offers," he added.

"With excess bandwidth to be available at a competitive price, we expect Chennai to attract a lot of IT companies, especially in the ITES (IT-enabled services) and call centre sectors. We also anticipate some of the companies located elsewhere in the country to move to Chennai," Mr Avinash said.

Sify has offsite disaster recovery centres at Vashi, Navi Mumbai, and at Tidel Park, each built at a cost of around Rs 30 crore. SatyamHosting offers hosting facilities at 11 different markets across the country. In addition, SatyamHosting had alliances with companies such as EasyCall, Singapore to offer infrastructure and services, he said.

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