Bangalore: BT and Infosys Technologies Ltd today (Feb 16, 2004) announced that they have signed a licensing and advanced development deal that will provide BT with a novel automated resource management system (ARMS) and enable Infosys to provide its clients with advanced and effective fieldforce resource management technology and solutions.

The deal involves joint development of BT's ARMS product and the non-exclusive licensing of BT's ARMS intellectual property rights to Infosys, an Infosys statement said.

Infosys, the statement said, would carry out development work over the next three years to productise ARMS for BT. In addition, Infosys will develop its own suite of ARMS-related offerings that it can provide to its customers as well as license to other companies providing workforce management solutions, it said.

ARMS is an automated, integrated and end-to-end resource management platform based on artificial intelligence (AI) and operations research technologies. It performs large-scale computer-based decision-making using advanced forecasting, planning, optimisation, collaboration and distribution technologies, it was noted.