The Hindu Business Line : TCS, Cisco in pact for virtual data centres

Mr John Chambers, Chairman & CEO, Cisco, and Mr S. Ramadorai, Chief Executive Officer & Managing Director, TCS, at a press conference in Mumbai on Tuesday.

Our Bureau

Mumbai, Feb. 10 Tata Consultancy Services has entered into an alliance with Cisco Systems Inc to jointly develop technologies based on data centre networking and security solutions.

As part of this initiative, TCS will invest in 1,000 people who would be trained on Cisco technologies, Mr N. Chandrasekaran, Chief Operating Officer and Executive Director of TCS, said at a news conference here on Tuesday.

The companies aim to facilitate virtual data centres to their customers through the alliance.

“Virtualisation is the most important technology that all data centres will look forward to. By virtualising data centre applications, we want to address the interoperability issues faced by the SMBs. The new joint solutions will enable SMBs access data by using any device in any form,” said the Cisco Chairman and Chief Executive, Mr John Chambers.

Cisco and TCS currently do $100 million plus worth of business annually, Mr Chandrasekaran said.

However, the two companies did not spell out the financial contours of the engagement.

The companies will also explore new networking innovations to address the needs of large and small businesses for IT services. As part of the deal, the San Francisco-based Cisco will set up a technology lab at TCS’ campus in Chennai.

The TCS scrip rose 1.86 per cent to close at Rs 524.6 on the National Stock Exchange today.