Virgin Atlantic Entrusts IT to Tata Consultancy Services Until 2011

LONDON, May 8 /PRNewswire/ -- Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), (BSE: TCS.BO, NSE: TCS.NS), a leading IT services and business solutions firm, can confirm that it has renewed its managed services contract with one of the world's leading long haul airlines Virgin Atlantic. By entrusting the management of its IT infrastructure and applications management to TCS, Virgin Atlantic is in a position to focus on core business activities and flex with the future challenges of the international airline industry.

Under the renewed agreement, TCS will continue to manage Virgin Atlantic's global end-to-end IT systems including a 24x7 service desk, infrastructure and application support services. The company also manages Virgin Atlantic's relationships with other third party IT vendors to ensure a cohesive approach to the airline's IT ecosystem. TCS' service delivery for Virgin Atlantic is designed around IT Infrastructure Library (ITIL) best practices framework. TCS' rigorous metrics-based management model and airline innovation expertise will ensure increased responsiveness for Virgin Atlantic customers.

"Today, airlines need to effectively exploit IT more than ever to be successful in a very competitive marketplace," commented Mike Cope, IT Director, Virgin Atlantic. "Thanks to our ongoing partnership with TCS we have the right partner to enable this."

Mr. A.S. Lakshminarayanan, VP and country manager, UK & Ireland, TCS, added, "Virgin Atlantic's IT infrastructure and services are worldwide and therefore require a partner with a similarly global reach. TCS has established a strong reputation for providing our clients with certainty of outcome in alignment with their strategic objectives and the renewal of our agreement with Virgin Atlantic is testament to our performance over the past three years."

The Travel and Transportation sector is emerging as a key vertical for TCS, generating 4.0% of the company's total $5.7 billion revenues in FY08. TCS launched a dedicated Travel & Hospitality Innovation Lab in 2007 to help airlines enhance customer experience and differentiate themselves in an era of increasing competition and new distribution models.

    About Virgin Atlantic Airways Limited

    --  Virgin Atlantic is one of the world's leading long-haul airlines
    --  It flies to 30 destinations worldwide from its main base at London
        Heathrow and London Gatwick
    --  There are 38 aircraft in its fleet, comprising 747-400s, A346 and A343
    --  Sir Richard Branson is the President of Virgin Atlantic; Steve Ridgway
        is the Chief Executive
    --  In 2007, Virgin Atlantic carried around 6 million passengers

About Tata Consultancy Services

Tata Consultancy Services is an IT services, business solutions and outsourcing organization that delivers real results to global businesses, ensuring a level of certainty no other firm can match. TCS offers a consulting-led, integrated portfolio of IT and IT-enabled services delivered through its unique Global Network Delivery Model, recognized as the benchmark of excellence in software development. A part of the Tata Group, India's largest industrial conglomerate, TCS has over 111,000 of the world's best trained IT consultants in 50 countries. The company generated consolidated revenues of US $5.7 billion for fiscal year ended 31 March 2008 and is listed on the National Stock Exchange and Bombay Stock Exchange in India. For more information, visit us at http://www.tcs.com

Note: This TCS release and other news announcements are available as part of an RSS feed at http://www.tcs.com.