Amsterdam - According to Sify.com, Tata Consultancy Services, International Business Machines Corp and three other companies won a $ 2.22 billion order from ABN Amro Holdings NV to maintain and upgrade its global information technology network.

Infosys Technologies, Accenture Ltd and Patni Computer Systems Ltd will also get part of the five-year order, the Amsterdam-based bank said in a statement today.

The order would allow Tata Consultancy, Infosys and Patni to gain a foothold in large customer technology-infrastructure management and software development contracts that's now mainly given to US rivals such as IBM and Accenture. Overseas companies have been hiring aggressively in India to take advantage of the lower wages to compete against Indian rivals.

The five-year outsourcing contract with IBM would oversee IT infrastructure services for the bank worldwide. Under the agreement, the company is expected to assume management of the majority of ABN Amro's worldwide information technology systems including servers, storage systems and desktops.

The only exception is the IT infrastructure of the business unit wholesale clients, which was already outsourced to EDS in 2003, the bank said in its notice to Amsterdam Stock Exchange.

For the application support and enhancements to the bank, TCS and Infosys have been allocated to maintain selected applications across business units to serve bank appropriately.

After September one, the planning for phased transition commencement dates is expected for application support and enhancement, subject to consent of local regulators, the bank said, adding the implementation of the agreements will be phased over 18 months.

In addition, ABN Amro has chosen Accenture, IBM, Infosys, Patni and TCS as its preferred vendors for application development. These vendors would develop new applications across all business units of the bank.