124/05
1 November 2005

Australia–India ICT partnership agreed

Australia will benefit from a new cooperation agreement signed by the CSIRO and Indian ICT company Infosys, the Minister for Communications, Information Technology and the Arts, Senator Helen Coonan said today.

“CSIRO has signed the twofold cooperation agreement with India’s second largest ICT company, Infosys, and will benefit from insights into the direction and requirements of the global ICT industry,” Senator Coonan said.

“Infosys will provide CSIRO with a strong distribution capability for CSIRO’s Australian-developed intellectual property to global markets.”

The agreement encompasses both cooperation in research and development in information engineering and commercialisation of CSIRO’s intellectual property.

Infosys is a leading global technology services firm, with a presence in 17 countries, including two offices in Australia—Melbourne and Sydney.

The cooperation agreement was signed in Bangalore by Dr Gautam Tendulkar, GM Commercialisation of the CSIRO ICT Centre during a recent high-level ICT industry delegation to India led by Senator Coonan.

“The agreement between CSIRO and Infosys demonstrates the potential for Australian and Indian organisations to partner and collaborate on important IT projects,” Senator Coonan said.

“ Australia has a range of high-value skills and innovative applications that are of value to India’s ICT companies and last week’s visit provided the opportunity for government and industry to build stronger ties and explore partnering opportunities between the two countries.”

The delegation met with government and business in New Delhi, Mumbai and Bangalore and visited some of India’s leading ICT companies—Tata Consultancy Services, Infosys, Satyam, HCL Technologies and NIIT Technologies.

As part of the cooperation agreement, Infosys also signed a licence agreement for CSIRO’s Panoptic Search Engine, which will enable Infosys to evaluate Panoptic for integration within Infosys’s financial applications.

Subsequent commercialisation projects will include the mobile video search technology developed by CSIRO under its Annodex ® standard.