Infosys chairman and chief mentor, N.R. Narayana Murthy has called for greater co-operation among Indian corporates to bag big contracts the way Infosys is already doing with its Bangalore-based chief competitor, Wipro to bag clients in the Indian banking sector.Addressing a conference here on Monday, Murthy said: “We are fierce competitors, but this is also the age of specialisation. They are good at hardware, while we are at software. Co-opetition is the way out. And this is a fine example of a collaborative effort.”“Wipro is good at hardware where we are zero. hence the need to join hands,” said murthy then went to narrate this incident.“I was once sitting in my office with a Wipro desk-top, Wipro’s lights on the ceiling and somebody asked me why I don’t have my competitor’s tiles too. I said if Wipro made good quality tiles, I will have that as well, so that wherever I look, front, up or down, it will be Wipro,” said Murthy.“Our partners should be ethical, legal and bring value to our clients,” Murthy added while addressing a news conference to launch Union Bank’s Rs 150-crore IT rollout which would have both Wipro and Infosys co-operating.As per the deal with Union Bank, Wipro Infotech will put all the systems together: solutions provided by Infosys, FSS Chennai for the ATM Switch and BK Solutions for telebanking systems. Wipro Infotech will act as prime systems integrator for Union Bank of India’s Rs 150-crore IT-rollout with Infosys’ providing the core-banking solution ‘Finacle’ and internet banking solution ‘BankAway’.“This is the way ahead: Co-opetition. When I was in France, some of the big IT companies did come together to work on a project with the customs and airlines,” pointed out Murthy. To this, Premji added: “We are solutions providers. If you want hardware from IBM, we will give you that. If you want it from Sun Microsytems, we will give you that as well. We are agonistic to individual components of end-solutions.”“We have been working together in projects and talking to banks for the last two years now, and would like to do so for another 200 years,” Murthy saidThe last word on what is the just beginning of more “togetherness” from these players came from Union Bank’s CMD V Leeladhar: “We have adopted a consortium approach. Rather than to talk to many on the project during its implementation, it is far easier with one.”
