In a sure sign that the Australian market is heating up to offshoring, Australian airlines Qantas has awarded two IT contracts to offshore service providers TCS and Satyam.

TCS, which has won a $90 million (AUS$120 million) contract — the largest awarded to an Indian IT- services company in Australia so far — will assume full responsibility for more than 75% of the total scope of Qantas’ Applications Services & Transformation (AST) outsourcing program. TCS will provide support and maintenance to all of Qantas’ key IT applications for airport operations and commercial systems. TCS will be the lead partner for the transition phase of the entire Qantas AST program, overseeing activities of many of Qantas’ internal and external groups involved in IT systems support and maintenance.

Satyam, which has bagged a $52 million (AUS $71million) contract, spanning over seven years, will provide application development and maintenance services for over 150 applications to the airlines.

Satyam’s award follows another such contract, which it bagged from Qantas in August 2006 for implementing Oracle’s e-business suite.

It is expected that TCS will leverage its new Innovation Lab for Travel and Hospitality, located in Chennai, India. The Lab incubates, develops and pilots new solutions for emerging technologies such as RFID, wireless and digital asset management.