SourcePro, established in 1992, is a premier partner of Microsoft, IBM, Novell and Citrix, providing software development and networking services to large corporations in India and abroad such as IPCL, Nirma, L&T, Adani Port, ABB, Philips and Pepsi Foods, besides executing assignments in China, Japan, Thailand, Germany and Singapore.

According to SourcePro managing director Mr Unmesh Mehta, "Our customers will now have access to vast resources of Baltimore-based AtlanticASP, including its new data centre in Carteret, New Jersey. Customers Relations Management (CRM) and Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) programmes can now be offered for global, secure access by any authorised user."

For outsourced IT operations, Mr Mehta said: "customers may choose to host industry-specific applications, or their entire IT department remotely with a third party vendor, or ASP. Some customers realise cost saving of over 60 per cent as compared to providing the same solution in-house."

The Phillips Group, a Parisppany, New Jersey-based telecom consulting firm, says the applications hosting market is expected to grow to more than $20 billion by 2003 and the average revenue growth of ASPs, says Phillips, is expected to reach about 250 per cent this year.

Even AtlanticASP.com's founder and chief executive officer Mr Christopher D Shelton in a message from his company's Maryland headquarters said: "Our relationship with SourcePro Infotech will allow us to provide additional value-added services to our current and prospective customers. We are excited about the relationship and feel that the added technical resources and expertise of SourcePro Infotech's team will allow us to not only increase our vertical market penetration, but shorten out time-to-launch for new customers significantly."

While SourcePro provides customers with Citrix Deployment Solutions and SQL Database Programming services, AtlanticASP focuses on custom, remotely hosted applications for healthcare, government and manufacturing verticals, IT consultancy and thin-client implementation services to customers' worldwide and has a unique server based computing approach.

SourcePro's software division provides ERP solutions and other software development services on various platforms like AS/400, MS SQL Server, Oracle, and Visual Basic, and its networking division provides connectivity solutions through state-of-the-art technologies.