CSI announces e-governance awards 2002
In an effort to promote e-governance in India, Computer Society of India (CSI) has instituted a series of awards for the central and state governments, bureaucratic departments, PSUs and municipal corporations that have taken considerable strides in e-governance. The awards, which will be given annually, will have various categories promoting different aspects of e-governance. This year five categories have been identified, namely Best Citizen Centric Project (BCCP), Best Website Project (BWP), Best Office Efficiency Project (BOEP), Best Revenue System (BRS) and the Best e-governed State. This year’s BCCP has been jointly awarded to the governments of Gujarat and Maharashtra; BWP has been awarded to the PWD of the government of Maharashtra; BOEP has been awarded to the Naval Dockyard’s intranet; and BRS has been awarded to Sarita, IGR, government of Maharashtra. Andhra Pradesh bagged the award for the Best e-governed State. Nihilent Technologies has agreed to be the principal sponsor for the award for a period of three years.

Infosys to set up disaster recovery centre in Mauritius
Infosys Technologies has announced that it will set up its first disaster recovery centre in the island of Mauritius. The centre, complete with infrastructure, network connections, telecommunication facilities as well as back up client data, will be on standby to take over client projects from across the globe, in case of any emergency. Serving as an alternate location in case of a disaster in other Infosys development centres, the disaster recovery centre will have a capacity to accommodate 1,500 people.

The proposed centre will be operational from January 2003 on a rented site and move to a company owned 25-acre premises in about three years, with an investment of $25 million. The Infosys campus will also house a global development centre to service its international clients. The centre will be well-connected to India as well as to Infosys centres in the US and the UK. In case of an emergency situation, such as natural disasters or political unrest, personnel will be relocated to the centre and work commenced instantly.

Indo-Fuji quickens problem solving with Intelligent help desk
Indo-Fuji Information Technologies, the Bangalore-based middleware application and system software company, has announced the launch of Intelligent Help Desk at Bangalore IT.com. The Intelligent Helpdesk is a software product module that can be integrated on the enterprise network to enable users to register problems to a centralised database server.

Dr K G Suresh, CEO and managing director, Indo Fuji Information Technologies said, “With Intelligent Helpdesk companies can execute complete audit trails of what actions were taken and by whom, prioritise and categorise jobs, manage support contracts by expiry date and/or number of new jobs, track hours and cost spent, maintain customer contact.”

The solution can be used by varied sectors and is targeted at small and medium networks.

Phoenix deploys next generation customer support over Cisco infrastructure
Phoenix Global Interactions (a division of Phoenix Global Solutions), has deployed an IPCC (IP-based contact centre) solution from Cisco Systems in Bangalore. Phoenix has implemented the entire suite of Cisco’s IPCC solutions and has replaced its traditional PBX with a Cisco IP telephony system. Phoenix plans to scale up its contact centre to 5,000 seats in the next five years.

Cisco’s IPCC solution enables the company to deliver next generation applications such as text chat, collaborative voice, Web browsing and automated e-mail management. Phoenix has also deployed Cisco’s IGX WAN switch to connect its contact centre to the local PSTN for local and long distance calls. The IGX WAN switch also terminates voice traffic at the India end of the international private leased circuit.

Satish Bangalore, managing director, Phoenix Global Solutions India said, “The introduction of new applications will enable Phoenix Global Interactions to offer its customers superior service on a simple and manageable infrastructure for its operations.” New applications such as IP telephony as well as enhanced supervising software will help Phoenix enhance the customer experience.

Cisco’s IP telephony and IPCC technology includes components such as Cisco call manager software, IP phones, intelligent contact management (ICM), IP IVR, CTI desktop, collaboration server, the Catalyst 6513 switch, and queue manager.

Genesys bags $7.8 million order for geospatial mapping
Genesys International, a niche engineering and IT services player, has bagged a $7.8 million contract for providing comprehensive mapping solutions for the state of Florida. This is the first time that a complete end-to-end digital mapping solution has been outsourced to any company in India.

The order has been given by a joint venture between one of the world’s largest reinsurance broking companies and a leading German technology firm. This order not only involves end-to-end aerial mapping of the state of Florida, but also the integration of street level imaging, which is one of the latest technologies in digital mapping. The order, which has to be executed over a period of two years, involves pioneering work to create state-of-the-art geo data for the real estate information services market in the US. After Florida, the project would then extend to entire US.

Oriental Insurance partners with TVA Help.Com
Oriental Insurance has signed an agreement with TVA Help.com to offer insurance cover for laptops, notebooks and palmtops of various brands. Under this agreement, TVA Help.com will canvass for laptop coverage insurance policies of Oriental Insurance to its customers who own laptops and other such mobile computing devices through its branches in four cities—Bangalore, Chennai, Hyderabad and Pune. The Oriental Insurance Company will cover each of these laptops of TVA Help.com’s customers comprising losses for accidental damages, theft, electrical and mechanical breakdown, fire and transit damage. It will charge only 4.2 percent of the depreciated value for the laptop, as well as a small service charge, as insurance premium.

PeopleSoft to deliver integrated HR help desk solution
PeopleSoft has announced PeopleSoft HelpDesk for Human Resources, a solution to enable organisations to manage employee queries and issues rapidly and cost effectively. PeopleSoft HelpDesk for HR claims to be the first pure Internet HR service solution to integrate Human Capital Management (HCM) and CRM principles.

The product provides a complete view of an employee’s case history and HR data, enabling quick response to problems. Employees can either self service their query, drawing upon the aggregated HR knowledge base, or be connected immediately to the right HR professional to resolve their case. PeopleSoft HelpDesk claims to reduce operational costs, since the resolution of employees’ enquiries is quick and efficient. Employee satisfaction is raised as the workforce’s needs are responded to more efficiently.

IMF selects i-flex solutions to address growing technology needs
i-flex solutions has announced that the International Monetary Fund (IMF) has selected its flagship product Flexcube to replace its legacy core banking application and operations infrastructure. Flexcube will enable the IMF to streamline operations in the areas of lending, deposits, financial accounting and business intelligence. Working with i-flex, the IMF has completed the Fit-Gap Analysis and is starting implementation with a target cutover date of May 2003. With the implementation of Flexcube IMF expects to achieve substantial improvements in service levels, efficiency and process streamlining.

Spectrum announces major new features in SpectrumSCM
Spectrum Software has announced the release of SpectrumSCM Version 1.1, a source configuration management tool that is platform-independent and Web-enabled as well. SpectrumSCM supports multiple platforms like Solaris, Windows, Mac OS, Unix, Linux and mainframe, to undertake version control, issue tracking, process management/control, workflow, release management, parallel development and more.

The solution enables the creation, tracking, and reporting of project metrics to support CMM or other quality objectives, add customised reports at run-time and flexible mechanisms to attach, view and track supporting documents, images, etc, to any change request at any time.

Borland speeds application development lifecycle with InterBase 7
Borland Software recently launched InterBase 7, the company's latest offering in the embedded database space. The launch is part of the company's strategy to strengthen Borland's deployment arm, improve developer productivity and enhance application performance. Borland officials claimed that unlike most databases, InterBase requires little to no database administration, is relatively quick to install, and is designed to lower maintenance costs.

Said Robert Schieck, CEO of Mers Systems, “With its small footprint, near-zero administration, ease-of-use, and low total cost of ownership, Borland InterBase 7 offers both developers and enterprises greater flexibility in deploying business applications.” According to him, the product is suitable for a wide-range of embedded applications. Some of the new features in the software include multiprocessor support, which enhances speed and power; connection monitoring, which improves developer productivity by easing the monitoring and control of connections, transactions and queries and type 4 JDBC driver, which eases deployment for application administrators.