Mumbai, Feb. 19: Infosys Technologies has formed a strategic alliance with Nihon Unisys Ltd of Japan.

The alliance is the culmination of the June 2007 partnership between the two to execute large-scale system upgrades of the Oracle e-business suite for Nihon’s customers.

Under the alliance, Infosys and Nihon Unisys will develop and market new products together as well as cooperate in consulting, IT maintenance and customer support.

The alliance brings together Nihon’s experience in the Japanese market and Infosys’s global delivery model, its experience in open systems and cutting edge technologies.

Japan is a key market for Infosys and it is present there for the last 10 to 11 years. Because of the language barrier, Japan had been a tough market to crack.

“It has been difficult for us as a foreign vendor to enter Japan’s system integration industry,” Infosys spokesperson Jo Ando reportedly told the international media.

Infosys aims to increase its sales in Japan to 10 per cent of its entire global revenues by 2010.

At present, it is less than 5 per cent of its annual net sales of around $3.3 billion.

Spooked by the falling revenue share from the American market, Infosys is now trying to shift its focus to other areas.

“In the long run, we want to bring down our revenues from the US to around 50 per cent and grow in the rest of the world — may be by 20 per cent in Europe and 20 per cent in the Asia Pacific, including Japan,” S. Gopalakrishnan, chief executive officer and managing director of Infosys, had said last month.

“We want to grow in non-US markets. Apart from Europe, we are looking at Australia, Japan, India, Latin America and South Africa. Hopefully, the rupee will not appreciate against all the currencies across the world,” Gopalakrishnan had said.