SIFY Technologies and SAUDI TELECOM Announce Partnership to Serve Global Telecommunication Markets

CHENNAI, India, March 16, 2011 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Sify Technologies Limited (NASDAQ: SIFY), India's leading provider of converged ICT services today announced their partnership with SAUDI TELECOM (STC), the largest telecom services provider in the Middle East and North Africa. This partnership will provide customers and partners wider network reach, richer portfolio of services and most importantly, the efficiencies of scale in today's growth markets by leveraging their respective investments in submarine and terrestrial telecom capacities and value added ICT services.

Speaking on the occasion, Mr. Raju Vegesna, Chairman and Managing Director, Sify Technologies said, "We are proud to be associated with STC, the largest telecom carrier in the Middle East. This partnership will help us deliver the most robust network footprint throughout the Middle East, Africa and India. With the development of joint services, this partnership will enhance SIFY's ability to deliver unparalleled global capabilities, scalability and performance reliability to customers worldwide who demand managed services and connectivity into India, the Middle East & African region."

"Our partnership with the market leader will help establish a seamless ICT service for our enterprise customers and help our Indian, Asian and US Carrier partners connect to Middle Eastern countries like Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Qatar, UAE, Oman, Yemen, Iraq, Sudan and East African countries like Djibouti, Somalia, Kenya, Tanzania, Mozambique, South Africa and Madagascar "

"With the largest international network in the Middle East and Africa, Saudi Telecom is the only Middle East operator today that has international connectivity by way of both multiple submarine cable systems and a terrestrial cable system via the recently launched Jeddah-Amman-Damascus-Istanbul (JADI) link," said Saad Demyati, Saudi Telecom's vice president of Wholesale Business Unit, "Our partnership with SIFY allows us deliver best in class network service reach into India, alternative network path and efficient Internet routing and most importantly leverage on SIFY's value added ICT offerings like cloud services, SaaS as well as managed integration services to STC's customers."

Elaborating on the partnership, Mr. Abhijit Barua, Sr. Vice President, Sify Technologies, said "This partnership will leverage and strengthen our joint product portfolio to create new revenue streams. SIFY's role will be to provide expertise in innovative managed services including cloud services and SaaS offerings in the Middle East and African markets."

STC General Manager of Marketing, Abdulhameed M. Al Hamad, stated: "We are pleased to announce the establishment of our latest PoP in India. This is a major milestone in our Saudi Global Management Network "SGMN" rollout into major regional economic hubs including the UAE, Bahrain, Qatar, Kuwait, Jordan, India, UK and Singapore. SGMN is a global Multi-Protocol Label Switching (MPLS) and available in key hub destinations around the world. As one of the largest regional Internet Protocol (IP-based) networks, it provides services for leading global enterprises from a variety of industry sectors, including financial services, manufacturing, logistics, as well as oil & gas and pharmaceutical industry. SGMN network is based on the latest state-of-art technology and is extremely reliable and diverse.

As announced earlier, SIFY's EIG (Europe India Gateway) submarine cable capacities are ready for activation and SIFY's exclusive partnership with GBI (Gulf Bridge International) to land their Submarine Cable System in India, is scheduled to go live in second half of 2011.

About Sify Technologies

SIFY is among the largest Managed Enterprise and Consumer Internet Services companies in India, offering end-to-end solutions with a comprehensive range of products delivered over a common telecom data network infrastructure reaching more than 600 cities and towns in India.

A significant part of the company's revenue is derived from Corporate Services, which include corporate connectivity, network and communications solutions, security, network management services, enterprise applications and hosting. SIFY is a recognized ISO 9001:2008 certified service provider for network operations, data center operations and customer support, and for provisioning of VPNs, Internet bandwidth, VoIP solutions and integrated security solutions, and ISO / IEC 20000 - 1:2005 certified for Internet Data Center operations. SIFY has licenses to operate NLD (National Long Distance) and ILD (International Long Distance) services and offers VoIP back haul to long distance subscriber telephony services. The company is India's first enterprise managed services provider to launch a Security Operations Center (SOC) to deliver managed security services. A host of blue chip customers use SIFY's corporate service offerings.

SIFY also caters to global markets in the specialized domains of eLearning Services and Remote Infrastructure Management Services. The eLearning Services designs, develops and delivers state-of-the-art digital learning solutions for non-profit, for-profit organizations and governmental organizations in the fields of Information technology, engineering, environment, healthcare, education and finance. The Remote Infrastructure Management Services provides dependable and economical solutions around managed services, hosting and monitoring.

Consumer services include broadband home access and the ePort cyber cafe chain across more than 200 cities and towns in India. Sify.com, the popular consumer portal, has channels on news, entertainment, finance, sports, games and shopping. Samachar.com is the popular portal aimed at non-resident Indians around the globe. The site's content is available in 8 Indian languages, which include Hindi, Malayalam, Telugu, Kannada and Tamil, Punjabi and Gujarati in addition to English.

For more information about SIFY, visit http://www.sifycorp.com.

About Saudi Telecom

STC Group (Saudi Telecom Company) is the leading telecommunications company in the MENA region and is ranked number 25 globally. The group has more than 100 million subscribers in ten countries, namely Malaysia, Indonesia, India, Kuwait, Turkey, South Africa, Lebanon, Jordan and Bahrain in addition to its presence in the Saudi market, offering the most innovative services in the industry.

STC operates one of the region's most advanced telecommunications networks. The network spans all corners of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and extends to all neighbouring countries in addition to having investments in terabit-size Submarine cable systems that connect 35 countries across North America, Europe, North Africa, Middle East and South East Asia.

In addition to traditional mobile and fixed services to its retail customers, STC offers a broad portfolio of services including Voice over IP, Internet access, IP data services, broadband transport, and many value added services. STC's Wholesale customers include local and regional operators and carriers, wireless service providers, ISPs, content providers and regional enterprises.

For more information visit: http://www.stc.com.sa

Forward Looking Statements

This press release contains forward-looking statements within the meaning of Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933, as amended, and Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended. The forward-looking statements contained herein are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those reflected in the forward-looking statements. SIFY undertakes no duty to update any forward-looking statements.

For a discussion of the risks associated with SIFY's business, please see the discussion under the caption "Risk Factors" in the company's Annual Report on Form 20-F for the year ended March 31, 2010, which has been filed with the United States Securities and Exchange Commission and is available by accessing the database maintained by the SEC at http://www.sec.gov, and SIFY's other reports filed with the SEC.

    For further information, please contact

    For Sify Technologies Limited

    Mr. Pijush Das
    Investor Relations (ext. 2703)
    [email protected]

    Mr. Praveen Krishna
    Corporate Communications (extn.2055)
    [email protected]
    +91-44-22540770 / 22540777

    Grayling Investor Relations

    Ms. Truc Nguyen (ext. 418)
    Mr. Christopher Chu (ext. 426)
    +1-646-284-9400
    [email protected]
    [email protected]

    For STC Wholesale
    Mr. Adel M. Malaikah
    Business Development
    +966504402493
    [email protected]

    Mr. Abdulrahman Bahanshal
    Marketing Communications
    +966503412519
    [email protected]

SOURCE Sify Technologies Limited