Tata Internet Services, a company promoted by Tata Industries that markets Internet services under the brand Tata Nova, is gearing up to offer application service provider services to its Internet Data Centre customers within the next one month.
The late entrant in the ISP market is currently in the process of signing up its existing IDC customers and will begin hosting their Internet operations in its 15, 000 sq ft Mumbai IDC.
’’We will begin offering applications through the ASP route, however it would take another 2 to 3 weeks for us to commence operations. We intend to undertake outsourcing jobs for corporates and would handle their internet operations through our data centre in Mumbai’’, said the ISPs marketing head, Vinod Giri.
TISLs ASP will offer industry specific and general purpose applications on a pay-as-you-use basis, to several vertical industries such as financial services, retail and manufacturing, hospitality and the automobile industry.
Value-added services such as network management services, messaging solutions, disaster recovery management and back-up ad recovery solutions will form a part of the company’s data centre business services.
’’Consumer testing for access services is currently on, full fledged services would be extended to corporate subscribers only during the next couple of months, ’’ Giri said.
The company’s Mumbai IDC will be the first to begin offering hosting services and will be soon followed by data centres in cities such as Chennai, Hyderabad, Bangalore and Delhi, that have yet to get functional.
The ISP does not intend to lower its Internet access rates and instead has plans to acquire a larger subscriber base by reaching B and C class towns across the country by leasing and hiring infrastructure from them.
It can be recalled that Tata Nova had planned to enter into a revenue sharing agreement with smaller ISPs and other infrastructure and basic cellular service providers for this purpose.
The ISP claims to have gathered around 14, 000 retail subscribers and about 30 corporate customers since February ’01.