WESTPORT Holdings Sdn Bhd has entered the second round of its bid to develop the proposed US$200mil Jawaharlal Nehru Port Trust in Mumbai, India, said its chief financial officer Chan Chee Keong.

“We have been shortlisted in the preliminary stage of the bidding process and are now waiting for new developments in the second phase,'' he said after signing a Memorandum of Understanding with Sun Microsystems in Kuala Lumpur yesterday.

Westport was among 11 foreign seaport developers, including Denmark-based Maersk, PSA Corp of Singapore and Japanese shipping concern Nippon Yusen Kabushiki Kaisha, pitching for the project.

Chan said the project entailed the development of a 600-metre berth container terminal capable of handling 800,000 TEUs (20-foot equivalent units) of containers.

Westport was reportedly positive on winning the bid due to its position as the operator of the 11th busiest seaport based on annual container handling of 2 million TEUs last year. It has also projected throughput to grow 30% to 2.5 million TEUs this year.

“The final result of the bidding process would be known within this year,” Chan added.

Meanwhile, in view of the increase in container throughput expected at Westport this year, the company is investing RM5mil in Sun Microsystems' Sun Fire 12000 server and Sun StorEdge SAN systems for the implementation of what is known as a server consolidation project.

The RM5mil is its largest single investment in information technology (IT) products so far.

Chan said the new server was more powerful and would help consolidate Westport's database management systems, which now ran on different platforms, under a single architecture.

Westport's container volume has grown 40% over the past two years and since the company embarked on the port operations, it had been spending more than RM10mil annually on hardware and software.

“This deal is currently the single largest investment in IT but due to the pressing need for planning and container handling efficiency, it will not be for long,'' Chan added.

He said the company was constantly seeking new ways to apply technology in its operations and business.

“We often find that we rapidly outgrow our hardware requirements, sometimes even for a new hardware that is barely a year old,'' he added.

Sun Microsystems Asia South corporate vice-president and managing director Lionel Lim said the server was ranked among Sun 's most powerful high-end servers.

Sun Microsystems now has five local clients in the banking, energy and telecommunications sectors using the server. Westport is the first port operator to use it.

“Commissioning the server not only allows Westport to become more efficient but enable it to reduce its cost of ownership while increasing availability and manageability,'' he added.