There are large deals, but they are moving slowly due to delay in decision making from clients. There is enough opportunity in smaller deals, said P R Krishnan, its Vice President, Global Head of Infrastructure Service  Industry experts opine that if there were six-seven IS deals for TCS in the $100 million segment earlier, that would come down to three-four. The trend will be similar for the industry.

On a year-on-year basis, the company has seen a 70 per cent growth in the business. Some of the areas seeing movement in IS are data centres, network and desktop management. Krishnan says the structure of deals is also changing. We have seen clients taking remote infrastructure services more keenly. Clients are also looking at end-to-end services rather than point solutions.

TCS began its IS business towards the end of 2004. The target, since, has been to grow this segment faster than its other businesses. We started with the US, UK and Europe. Some of the large deals that multi-nationals had, when we started, where coming to an end and customers were wanting to try something new, says Krishnan. It was in 2006-07 that the IS segment also took the companys global delivery model strategy.

Krishnan adds that Indian players got to table a combination of features like cost advantage, technology, delivery model, flexibility and transparency. From the services part alone, customers can save upto 30-50 per cent, he said.

The IS business unit has over 7,000 employees (TCS uses the term `associates), of which 70-75 per cent are onsite. The company serves 200 clients. The ratio of revenue from existing and new clients is 50:50, and the company expects this to continue for the coming year. For the third quarter ended December 2008, the IS segments contribution to the companys revenue was 8.3 per cent.

Apart from the global focus, Krishnan feels that IS in the domestic market has grown well. Currently 10 per cent of revenues in this segment comes from the Indian market. Government has been a big focus area for us. But going ahead, verticals like BFSI (banking, financial services and insurance) and retail will get traction, he says.

Despite the slowdown, Nasscom the information technology industry body expects IS to drive growth for outsourcing services. It is estimated that 70 per cent of IT support for IS can be performed from a remote location.