Comverse Tech bags $10m order from Reliance
In a move that would give it a foothold in the Indian market, global telecom systems and software solution provider, Comverse Technology, has bagged a large order from Reliance Infocomm.

The project, which is believed to be around $10 million in terms of total value, will involve phased implemenation of call management and billing systems for the pre-paid mobile subscriber business of Reliance.

UK set to contribute 20 percent of Indian ITES market in '02-03
The United Kingdom is likely to triple its IT-enabled services (ITES) outsourcing to India from the current $150 million to $460 million by March 2003, according to Nasscom.

“The United Kingdom is likely to contribute over 20 percent of the total Indian ITES market by March 2003,” said Nasscom’s Sunil Mehta. In the last fiscal, almost 10 percent of the total Indian ITES market, estimated at $1.5 billion, was sourced from UK.

Cognizant to buy part of Silverline Tech assets
Cognizant Technology Solutions Corporation will acquire a customer (American Express Travel Related Services), and related assets from the US arm of Silverline Technologies. It will also provide employment to 300 software professionals of Silverline.

The American Express business represents about 20 percent of Silverline’s revenue, an international media report, which quoted a Silverline spokesperson, said. For the quarter ended March 2002, Silverline has recorded sales of Rs 37.71 crore and net profit of Rs 13.15 crore.

FreeMarkets signs pact with Reliance Industries
FreeMarkets Inc, an enterprise sourcing software and service solutions provider, has signed an agreement with Reliance Industries. According to a release, under the terms of the agreement, Reliance will leverage FreeMarket’s enterprise sourcing software and service solutions as a platform for strategic sourcing.

Fusion Tech charts bigger role for Indian arm
Fusion Technologies, a US-based financial services provider and an IT consultancy company, has decided to involve its Indian subsidiary Fusion Cybertech as a strategic player in its future growth. Fusion Technologies’ senior partner Charles Gerth said that the Indian outfit in Hyderabad would share major projects and responsibilities of the US parent. In order to make the Indian operations broad-based, the US parent plans to invest $1 million in Fusion Cybertech over the next few months.

Aditya Birla Group eyes acquisitions in BPO sector
Recognising the growth potential in the business process outsourcing (BPO) and call centre arena, the Aditya Birla Group has been actively scouting for strategic deals and acquisitions in this segment. Reliable sources informed that the group has had negotiations with BPO and call centre companies for a strategic deal. While the size of the proposed acquisition could not be ascertained, one investment banker said that at least $15-20 million would be required for buying any call centre or BPO company currently.

China will equal India’s software exports by 2006
With the entry of major Indian software giants into China, the communist giant will be able to catch up with India in software exports in a matter of four years, a leading analyst has forecast. China’s software exports will catch up with India’s in four years with help from Indian software companies, Gartner’s research director, Asia-Pacific operations, Dion Wiggins said. The exports of software and application development services in China would grow from last year’s $850 million to $27 billion in 2006, with an average annual growth rate of 620 percent. During the same time, Indian software and service sector exports will also jump from $6.2 billion to $27.5 billion.

— Financial Express

Quantum, PowerQuest to offer disaster recovery solution
Quantum and PowerQuest have announced a strategic alliance to provide disaster recovery solutions to customers of Quantum’s Network Attached Storage (NAS) products. Quantum customers can implement a multi-faceted disaster recovery solution that consists of storing static image files of PCs or servers onto a Quantum Snap Server or Guardian NAS server through PowerQuest DeployCenter, allowing quick and simple recovery of complete partitions or individual files. At the same time, PowerQuest DataKeeper continuously monitors desktop file activity while running in the background, automatically creating and saving a backup to the Quantum NAS server every time a file is modified. This latest offering continues a three-year relationship between Quantum and PowerQuest. Since 1999, Quantum’s industry-leading Snap Servers have shipped with PowerQuest DataKeeper. With the introduction of its Guardian NAS servers in April 2002, Quantum also provides its large business and enterprise-level customers the added protection of PowerQuest DataKeeper for automated client data backup.

HP names Bangalore Labs marketing champion of the year
HP India has announced that Bangalore Labs has been awarded the Marketing Champion of the Year at their annual Asia Pacific Software Olympics. Presented annually to HP’s top channel partners in the Asia Pacific region, the Software Olympics Awards recognise channel partners for their excellent sales, marketing, and technical performance. HP OpenView is HP’s range of products in the enterprise management arena.

Microsoft Exchange 2000 Server ranked Number 1 by IDC
Microsoft India recently announced that IDC India ranked its Exchange 2000 Server as the number one enterprise mail messaging and collaboration platform. The research report by IDC indicates that Exchange 2000 has 60 percent of market penetration in the mail server market in India followed by Unix Send Mail with 14 percent penetration. Netscape Mail Messenger and Lotus Notes had a share of 11 percent and 10 percent respectively. Wipro, Infosys, Maruti, Intelligroup, Ranbaxy, Central Depository Services, and Mastek are some of the leading Indian corporates that have deployed Exchange 2000 Server.

Macromedia delivers Flash Communication Server MX
Macromedia recently announced the immediate availability of Macromedia Flash Communication Server MX in India, the first server to unite communications and applications. The new server integrates support for streaming media, real-time collaboration, and multi-way video, audio, and text messaging into a single solution. The server also leverages the authoring environment of Macromedia Flash MX and broad distribution of Macromedia Flash Player, as well as the capabilities of the entire Macromedia MX product family. The product, which runs on Windows, can be downloaded from the Macromedia Online Store at a cost of Rs 25,000 for the personal edition and Rs 2,25,000 for the professional edition. The professional edition includes a one-year software subscription. Content and applications for the server can be authored using Macromedia Flash MX on either the Macintosh or Windows platforms.

Sirva awards $83 million outsourcing contract to Covansys
Covansys recently announced that they have been awarded an $83 million outsourcing project by Sirva, a global business services leader. Under the terms of the contract, Sirva will outsource selected applications development and maintenance, as well as project management, to Covansys.

The partnership is part of Sirva’s strategy to reduce non-core IT spending, while at the same time enhance the level of customer service. Sirva also expects to reap immediate first year cost savings, in addition to long-term savings of over 20 percent. Sirva’s ability to ramp services up or down provides them with added project flexibility.

Wipro Technologies and NetCracker form OSS alliance
Wipro Technologies and NetCracker Technology has announced that they have entered into an OSS alliance to provide customers the combined benefit of Wipro’s value-added consulting services and NetCracker’s OSS solutions. The integrated offering would leverage on Wipro’s expertise in consulting, system integration, developing custom network management applications and Netcracker’s suite of products. The NetCracker suite of products enables service providers to automate and streamline order management, inventory management and provisioning processes. Fully Web-based and architecturally open, NetCracker solutions seamlessly integrate with other OSS components including customer care, trouble ticketing and billing.

Novell ZENworks keeps handheld costs down
Novell recently shipped Novell ZENworks for Handhelds 5, which according to company officials automates key network management tasks to save customers money and boost productivity. ZENworks for Handhelds protects data with centralised password and file management policies while reducing the total cost of owning handhelds. The product, part of the cross-platform ZENworks management solution, attempts to make mobile business easier by standardising, deploying and managing software and device configuration across the entire organisation. The solution also gives customers the ability to automate and centralise the management of all computing resources, including servers, desktops, laptops and handhelds.The product is now available through Novell authorised resellers and solution providers for approximately $59 per user license.

Acer takes mobile computing to the next level
Acer has announced the launch of TravelMate 636 LC notebook, which is equipped with the latest, top-of-the-line Mobile Intel Pentium 4-M 2 GHz processor. With processor speeds up to 2 GHz, the Mobile Intel Pentium 4 Processor-M offers outstanding performance and extended battery life for real-time conferencing, streaming video, graphics presentations, and other multimedia applications. The Mobile Intel Pentium 4 Processor-M incorporates energy-saving features and significantly extends the battery life of mobile PCs with Deeper Sleep Alert State. The processor uses less power in both the performance and battery optimised modes, so it is cooler and can be used in smaller mobile PCs and devices.

Access sales MIS from anywhere, anytime
NetLink Technologies and C&S have entered into an agreement through which C&S would act as the country associate for NetLink’s SalesMIS.net. SalesMIS.net is an online field sales information management system, which helps companies to manage their field sales force and get critical MIS. The solution is basically targeted at the manufacturing, textile, consumer products, industrial products and consumer services sectors. Both the companies will identify emerging domain areas where SalesMIS.net can be extended to, and provide user inputs that would lead to the development of industry-specific templates. SalesMIS.net customers need not invest in any additional hardware or software. They only need to sign up a subscription for all their users of SalesMIS.net and renew the subscription periodically based on usage.

Satyam Infoway to provide hosting services for Hutch
Satyam Infoway has announced that it is providing Web hosting services for the Hutchison Essar Telecom portal www.hutch.co.in, focused on the Indian markets, from their Level 3 Internet Data Centre (IDC) at Navi Mumbai. The Hutch website represents the online face of the Hutch brand present in the four circles—Delhi, Andhra Pradesh, Chennai and Karnataka. Satyam Infoway’s Level 3 IDC is the first of its kind in India. Through this data centre, Satyam Infoway offers its clients a combination of infrastructure uptime, security, superior bandwidth as well as scalability. The Hutch website engages an attractive use of Flash technologies to create a Web experience that is engaging while also providing end-users with real-time information.

HCL Perot gets enterprise-wide P-CMM Level 4 assessment
HCL Perot Systems (HPS) has announced that it has been assessed at the predictable level of the People Capability Maturity Model by KPMG. This makes HPS the first company in the world to be assessed enterprise-wide at Level 4 of version 2 of the model. The P-CMM model, developed by Carnegie Mellon University’s Software Engineering Institute, has five levels of maturity and twenty-two Key Performance Areas (KPAs). The model helps software organisations increase their ability to attract, develop, motivate, organise and retain the talent needed to continuously improve their software development capabilities. It also helps to develop and promote a culture of excellence.

GTWA changes name to ONCE
The Global Trading Web Association (GTWA) has announced at that its membership has approved a name change to the Open Network for Commerce Exchange (ONCE). The Association also announced the addition of five new member companies and the appointment of Kerry Lamson to the newly created position of chief executive officer. The name change is part of a broader focus by ONCE to involve all marketplaces and exchanges, both public and private, as well as a related network of customers, suppliers, service providers and technology vendors. The ONCE charter will allow the association to expand its reach, continuing to build upon the original vision of creating the largest open interoperating network of networks in the world.