But as Soumitro Ghosh, senior vice president of finance solutions at Wipro, explains it, one of the major benefits that the Bangalore, India-based vendor expects to gain from the acquisition of Citi Technology Services Ltd. is the Citigroup unit's ability to deliver services to other customers.

Many U.S. companies, especially in , operate their own offshore centers in India and other countries as an alternative to contracting with offshore providers. Citi Technology Services, which was set up in 2005, has about 2,000 full-time and part-time employees in the Indian cities of Mumbai and Chennai.

But Citigroup has been using its India-based operations not just for software development or tech support, but also to provide remote infrastructure management services, including administration of internal databases, networks, desktop systems and midrange servers.

The financial services firm "successfully demonstrated" that infrastructure outsourcing can work in offshore locations, Ghosh said. "What we intend to do now is scale it up," not only for Citigroup but also as a model for other clients, he added.

The sale of the Citigroup unit, which was today, is expected to be completed before the end of next year's first quarter.