Speedwing, a British Airways division, launched 'World Network Services' (WNS) in Bombay, as an export - oriented - unit (EOU) with an initial investment of Pounds sterling 1 million. WNS will sell information technology, office support and administrative services to airlines and other industries world-wide.

Commissioning the unit at the newly-setup Godrej Complex in Vikhroli in North East Bombay, the managing director of Speedwing and chairman of WNS said that Bombay was decided as the headquarters because of the availability of good infrastructure and young educated work force. Speedwing had looked at South Africa and China before settling for Bombay, he said.

WNS has three customers in India presently, including British Airways and Maersk Airlines. The $14 million information technology contract with Indian Airlines, signed in conjunction with British Airways' business partner, Tata Information Services Ltd., aims to provide the domestic airline with new skills and service standards to meet its expanding needs. A 11-member Speedwing project team from London would be based in Delhi for the next 12 months to install the new business system at the Indian Airlines, including developing the software and customising the system to the airlines' requirements. The passenger reservation, ticketing and flight departure control system being supplied to Indian Airlines was already used world-wide-wide at British Airways and other airlines processing over 200 million passengers a year. Speedwing has a set up offices in New York and Kuala Lumpur also.

Philips NV of the Netherlands has set up its first global centre for multi-divisional software in Bangalore. This centre, called the Philips Software Centre, will cater exclusively to Philips world-wide operations and design and develop software to support its next generation products. It will meet the global requirements of four international product divisions - sound and vision, semi conductors, industrial electronics and medical systems.

The centre would be a part of the world-wide software network interlinked to advance research centres in the world. This will be a value- added centre focusing on product development and will play a major role in the development of a new range of products for Philips.

The CEO, Philips Software Centre, Bangalore, said the company has tied up with IIT Delhi and set up a semiconductor lab in the institute.

Software will be developed to design TVs, VCRs, hi-fi systems and multimedia under the consumer and entertainment products division. The medical electronics division includes products like diagnostic systems for X-rays equipment and integrated clinical solutions.

The industrial electronics business, which is largely solutions driven and capital intensive, deals with industrial automation, test equipment and smart card applications. However, semiconductor design and development is a highly specialised and capital intensive area involving VLSI chip design, ASIC services and digital signal processing , the CEO added.

Bangalore - based Siemens Communication Software Ltd, a 70:30 joint - venture company between Siemens AG of Germany and its Indian arm Siemens India Ltd., has decided to invest Rs. 100 crores ($28 million ) in the coming financial year in its software development centre in Bangalore, as part of its major expansion programme.

The software development centre is a 100% export-oriented-unit under the software technology park scheme. The government of India has permitted Siemens to import capital goods worth $ 10 million for the centre.

The Bangalore centre is the 14th software communication centre of the OEM Division of Siemens. The other centres are located in Germany, Austria, USA, UK, Portugal, Slovania, Brazil and Taiwan. The Bangalore centre is the first of its kind in the SAARC region. It is developing and exporting software to its principal companies. The company also develops communication software for Siemens Exchange called Electronic World-wide Switching Digital (EWSD). As of now, 216 telecom administrations in 89 countries have either installed or ordered over 100 million digital ports of EWSD.

Siemens Communication Software is the centre of competence for the development process from analysis of the requirements to the maintenance of the service. The current projects of the company are : telecommunication management of network (TMN) for narrow band nodes ( EWSD) and for access networks (AN), basic craft terminal ( BCT) for local management of narrow band nodes and broad band nodes ( EWSX) , multi-functional switch board (MSB), multi-functional attendant console (MAC) for EWSD and test environment tool box (TET).