 "Digicable Signs Strategic Outsourcing Agreement With IBM")
Digicable, a cable and broadband distribution player in India, has signed a 10-year strategic outsourcing agreement with IBM at an initial outlay of Rs 380 crore.
As part of this agreement, IBM will support the integration of Digicable’s digital media content delivery and value-added services applications with its core business technologies and processes. This integrated approach will enable Digicable to provide superior and personalised service to its subscribers.
The deal with IBM will see alignment of key strategic business and IT objectives to ensure greater leverage of technology investments for the growth planned by Digicable.
More specifically, IBM will enable Digicable to manage its business processes better and help enhance revenue per subscriber by facilitating the launch of value-added services (VAS) such as Video-on-Demand, Push-VoD, Interactive TV, Internet Service on TV, and gaming and telephony. Digicable’s digitisation initiative will also provide its customers with access to more channels with better picture quality and sound.
As part of the agreement, IBM will provide IT infrastructure services, network support, application maintenance services and security services. IBM will leverage its strength in hardware and software solutions to assess and help optimise operations for Central/ Remote Head Ends and physical/ digital assets. IBM will also implement and manage core applications and services, including B2B/ B2C and employee portals, voucher and credit management systems, EBPP (Electronic Bill Presentation & Payment), Intellectual Property Management (IPM) and ERP.
Asif Khan, Chief Technology Officer, Digicable said, “We believe in leveraging the latent advantages of the cable networks and latest technological innovations to derive new services to meet our customer expectations and facilitate our franchisee partners.”
“The partnership with IBM will help us focus on our core business, reduce time-to-market for new services and adapt quickly to meet future market requirements at an optimum cost.”
The contract was signed in December 2009.