UIDAI seeks other IT vendors to bid for the 2,000-crore outsourcing contract as IBM and HP drop out from the race

July 23, 2011 at 12:15 pm | Posted in corporate complaints | Comments Off on UIDAI seeks other IT vendors to bid for the 2,000-crore outsourcing contract as IBM and HP drop out from the race

UIDAI seeks other IT vendors to bid for the 2,000-crore outsourcing contract as IBM and HP drop out from the race

By Ruchika Mehta, 18 May 2011 at 07:07

Major tech giants – IBM and HP have reportedly dropped out of the 2,000-crore UIDAI (Unique Identity Development Authority of India) bid, the race to manage all IT and national repository, which will contain data of all Indian citizens.

After IBM and HP opted out, the UIDAI approached other vendors for the bid. UID officials further confirmed the participation of remaining five vendors- Accenture, Wipro, TCS, HCL Infosystems and Mahindra Satyam in the 2,000 crore UID bid.

The tech majors had earlier complained to Unique ID Authority of being biased towards products of certain vendors (EMC Corp and Cisco). The authority postponed the bidding last month and made changes to the tender specifications after a fiery meeting in the capital with the bidders.

While denying submission of any bids, IBM and HP clearly indicated the conditions didn’t matched their requirements and disclosed the decision to quit from the bidding process was truly at the disposal of its Global HQs. Things had become pretty hostile between the tech majors and the authority over the weeks.

The timely selection of the IT vendor is critical to the success and implementation of the UIDAI project, which aims at giving 600 million Unique ID numbers by 2014.

Being defensive, the company officials opined their chances to win the project were not as bright, which was cited as a major reason for their non-participation. This came as a surprise as both companies got selected and participated in all pre-bids as well.

According to UIDAI officials, it will take about three months to decide on the winner from the bidders. The selected vendor will manage all IT infrastructure for the project. Only large firms with at least 4,000 people and sales of 6,000 crore in the last three years were allowed to bid.