On Wednesday, IT Company Patni Computer System said that it has managed to get a contract from the Air Transport Association of America (ATA).

ATA is a business association of the premier airline companies of US and were looking for IT services that could collect and manage their large stream of data.

So, now Patni needs to develop, implement and maintain the data inflow of the ATA members. They aim is to keep the system running smoothly.

The name of ATA's database is - ATA Aviation Marketplace. It currently has 150 major suppliers and 60 airlines.

ATA needs to maintain 6 million records and 20,000 purchase orders every month. These include the data for all the member airlines.

Talking about the project, James C May, President and CEO of ATA said that the association is looking for unbiased information from the data. And that is why it wanted a company that could guarantee the fulfillment of this basic need.

The importance of the project increases since this is the first time in a decade that ATA is going in for such an upgradation.

The work needs to be completed by 2011.