SITA Plans to Bring New IT Services to Smaller Airports

SITA plans to establish a global network of partners to make its shared-use passenger-handling and baggage-processing applications available to airports which handle five million passengers or less per year.

The information technology company estimates there is a worldwide market of over 1,000 airports in this category that could profitably use such systems as CUTE (common use terminal equipment) and self-service passenger ticketing kiosks.

SITA will offer its products and services on an ASP (applications service provider)-basis to make an airport's total cost of ownership lower than was previously possible.

Francesco Violante, SITA INC's CEO, says his company believes small and medium-sized airports are coming under increasing pressure to upgrade their IT infrastructure, so SITA is responding by making its technology available at prices, it considers as affordable, through VAR (value-added reseller) agreements.  These would be made with SITA-certified partners, with local expertise, that will deal "face-to-face" with the airports and provide on-site support and maintenance.

Qualification criteria and specifications will be provided by SITA along with training, market intelligence and full remote support.  Pearson VUE will guarantee the quality of SITA's certification program for indirect channel distribution and VARs.

TAV, which operates Istanbul's Ataturk international airport and other airports in Turkey, will be certified as SITA's first exclusive reseller of CUTE, BagManager and BagMessage products in that country.

SITA estimates the value of this potential market to be $2 billion over the next five years. (Five years is the typical length of an airport IT contract.)  02-05-2006.

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