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BAeHAL to provide Datastream products to defence sector

Fakir Chand in Bangalore

BAeHAL, joint venture between the Hindustan Aeronautics Ltd and the UK-based BAE Systems, has entered into a strategic alliance with the US-based Datastream Systems Inc, to market the latter's asset lifecycle management solutions to the defence, aerospace, and aviation sectors in the Indian sub-continent.

As a world leader in ALM and CMMS (computerized maintenance management systems) solutions to a wide-range of industrial sectors, the $100-million Datastream will license its patented technology and software products to the Indian customers through BAeHAL, which will customize and deploy the solutions with value-added services for optimal utilisation.

Datastream director for the Asia Pacific region Haja Mohideen told rediff.com that its applications have been installed in over 55,000 sites worldwide, and the numbers represent 50 per cent of the market share among the top 10 vendors in the maintenance software, including two-thirds of the Fortune 500.

"In the APAC region, we are mainly targeting the vertical sectors in Japan, China, and India to market our dedicated products. We see a huge potential for our prospective customers to realize the benefits of proper management of their assets. Being highly asset intensive with expensive materials and spare parts, the defence, aerospace, and aviation establishments in these countries need to ensure the highest operational readiness," Mohideen averred.

The technology partnership will enable the Bangalore-based BAeHAL to use the enterprise and professional versions of Datastream's product range such as MP2 and MP5I for providing specified solutions configured to meet the client's requirements.

"Managing assets has become a crucial factor with a bearing on the profitability and productivity as return on assets and return on capital employed are the prime consideration to asset-based establishments, especially in the capital intensive defence, aerospace, and aviation industries."

Extending customers' operations beyond basic maintenance management, ALM also covers asset management, work management, inventory management, and analysis/information management.

"It enables effective utilisation of maintenance process to get the most of assets and resources."

Highlighting the advantages of deploying Datastream solutions, BAeHAL chief executive officer M K Govind said ALM and CMMS offered full management of fixed and moveable assets, including facility, IT, and fleet management.

"The move from reactive or corrective maintenance to predictive maintenance allows efficient planning and resource utilization. We can our customers that with the implementation of Datastream software, they can bring down the management cost by 30 per cent, with 10 per cent reduction in inventory and another 10 per cent in labor overtime," Govind claimed.

The partners are confident of roping in the Indian Air Force as one of its high-valued customers, with other major defence and aerospace undertakings across the country being other potential customers.

"We are expecting to do a business of $300,000 during the current fiscal year and $1 million next year," BAeHAL chief operations officer Air Cmde K Lakshmanan asserted.

The two partners are also exploring the possibility of extending the alliance to the non-defence sector in the near future though Datastream is planning to have alliance with other strategic partners for catering to the other industrial segments such as manufacturing, transportation, oil & gas, and the railways.

According to the unaudited results for the financial year 2000-01, BAeHAL had posted revenue of Rs 121 million and a profit before tax of Rs 24 million.

With the new alliance, the turnover for the current fiscal year (2001-02) is projected to be around Rs 205 million with a PBT of Rs 40 million.

As a 100 per cent dedicated export-oriented unit, BAeHAL focuses on the software development for defence industries and aerospace companies, worldwide with major presence in the UK, Germany, and France in Europe.

The seven-year-old BAeHAL has a paid-up capital of Rs 60 million and an authorised capital of Rs 100 million.

With HAL holding 49 per cent stake in the equity, BAE Systems has a controlling stake of 40 per cent, and the Bombay-based UTI, the largest mutual fund operator in the country, has the rest 11 per cent.

Outside India, the company has full-fledged offices at Farnborough in London. Some of its corporate clients are British Airways, British Aerospace, SAGEM, Thales Avionics (Thomson-CSF Sextant) and ECE.

Its aerospace software division is engaged in the development and testing of real time embedded avionic software for safety critical and mission critical systems such as flight control system, glass cockpit displays, advanced electronics instrumentation systems in commercial and military aircraft.

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