Govt endorses Indian ERP software

The Australian Government has endorsed India-based software and services vendor ICICI Infotech as a favoured supplier of ERP software to Federal agencies and government departments.

ICICI Infotech, a subsidiary of India's US$19 billion ICICI Group, announced that it had achieved Australian Government endorsed supplier status under the Commonwealth Government's Endorsed Supplier Arrangement (ESA).

Endorsed supplier status meant ICICI's ERP II range of financial software and services had extra leverage in some of Australia's biggest and most lucrative deals.

Arvind Joshi, chief operating officer at ICICI Infotech, said the endorsement followed last month's award of the Software Engineering Institute's Capability Maturity Model (CMM) Level 5. Few companies in Australia had reached Level 5, which was believed to represent international-standard software process improvement adoption.

“It is further proof of our ability to provide quality solutions to the government sector in Australia as we have done in other parts of the world,” Joshi said.

ESA began in 1994 to help government departments make good IT choices while cutting the cost of doing business with governments, which often required a long, expensive tender process.

ICICI Infotech opened its Sydney office in early 2003. ICICI Infotech in Australia markets ERP II, banking and insurance software to large organisations.

The company, which claims to have about 600 customers internationally, has a presence in the US, Germany, Singapore, Malaysia, the United Arab Emirates and has headquarters in Mumbai (formerly Bombay), in India.

ICICI Infotech was spun off in 1999 from ICICI Group, which the company claimed was the first non-Japanese Asian financial services company to be listed on the New York Stock Exchange.