News

posted on 11 June 2008 06:18

Sun and EMC may take Ericsson to court to force it to drop the use of HP storage instead of their contracted storage in an Indian state telco's disaster recovery project.

BSNL - Bharat Sanchar Nigam - is India's largest telecommunications provider and is setting up disaster recovery (DR) sites around India. It's partner, which has the main responsibility for implementing these sites, is Ericsson. BSNL has contracted with Sun and EMC to provide IT equipment for the DR sites. Ericsson says it has successfully implement such installations with HP in the past and could set up the BSNL sites faster if it used the HP gear it was familiar with.

Thus Ericsson wants to substitute HP kit for the Sun and EMC products in the original and agreed BSNL contract. Sun and EMC are up in arms and threatening to go to court to stop Ericsson taking business away from them.

According to a report, BSNL issued its tender document in March 2006. After receiving replies a BSNL technical committee decided in favour of Sun and EMC technology. HP was not included. Once Ericsson started implementing the DR site build-up it decided it preferred the HP way and told BSNL in April this year it wanted to use HP kit in three DR zones or areas. BSNL decided to agree as that meant its preferred timescale could be met.

Sun and EMC, naturally disagree. More here.

^{[Chris Mellor.]}