India News Briefs

IBM India appoints Benz Infotech as Linux partner
IBM India has appointed Benz Infotech as a Linux services and solution partner in India. IBM India’s tie- up with Benz Infotech will help the company deliver end-to-end Linux solutions to customers in India. In this capacity, Benz Infotech will offer customers technical consultancy, technical support, quality assurance and complete turnkey solutions integrating their services with IBM eServers and storage solutions, thereby reducing the time-to-market of their products and solutions. IBM will also leverage Benz Infotech’s Linux competency to support other partners in their Linux efforts, for solution areas like high availability, high performance clustering, grid computing, server/network security solutions and VoIP.

EFY launches LiFY
EFY Enterprises has launched Linux from India–For You (LiFY), an educational version of Linux. LiFY is aimed at providing cost-effective educational software solutions. LiFY is intuitively designed with a Windows XP like interface (XP desktop environment). It has a separate menu for educational applications. All applications are based on open source, which means that they can be used royalty free for various business and personal applications.The operating system does not need any installation and can run directly from a CD-ROM. LiFY has been integrated with many applications that are useful for education. These include applications meant for students at school, college and research level. Some of the applications bundled with LiFY include: OpenOffice (spreadsheet, document processor, presentation software), Wims (Internet server system for mathematical and educational applications), Euler (program for quickly and interactively computing with real and complex numbers, matrixes and intervals) and many others.

HP to unveil ‘Return and Recycle’ programme
HP has announced an enhanced recycling programme in India that provides its customers easy means to dispose their used consumables in a socially and environmentally responsible manner. The HP Planet Partners programme, to be rolled out in 42 cities across the nation, will offer to take back end-of-life inkjet cartridges as well as laser print toners. The programme is open to all HP customers in India. In its first phase of rollout, this recycling programme will be available in Australia, China, Hong Kong, India, Japan, Korea, New Zealand, Singapore and Taiwan, with plans to expand it further in 2004. All returned LaserJet and inkjet print cartridges will go through a multi-phase recycling process in which their reuse and recovery of the materials is maximised. The recycled materials are used in the manufacture of a variety of products such as automobile parts, microchip fabrication process trays, copper wires, steel plates, and the precious metals used in electronics and electrical equipments. For toner cartridges, more than 95 percent of the material can be recovered and reclaimed.

Accel ICIM bags Indian Airlines order
Accel ICIM Systems and Services has bagged an order from Indian Airlines to provide complete facility management solutions at various airports and booking offices that fall under the state-run carrier’s entire Northern region. The order is worth Rs 1.02 crore. Accel ICIM has signed a two-year contract with IA, which entails deploying 53 engineers round-the-clock at ten airports and around 14 IA offices in the Northern region. Accel ICIM would provide Indian Airlines support in the areas of telecommunications, hardware, software, network support and operations support. It would also provide a spectrum of services through its network management, vendor management and asset management services for the state-owned carrier.Emerson officially unveils engineering centre Emerson opened its new engineering centre in Pune for product design and software development to meet growing customer demand in India and throughout Asia.Work out of this facility will help Emerson divisions speed time-to-market for new products and assist its businesses in developing and tailoring Emerson’s global products and solution platforms to meet the needs of customers in local markets.”This new centre is significant, as it is Emerson’s first such corporate-wide centre for collaboration of multiple divisions and businessgroups,” said Dr Randall D Ledford, Emerson senior vice president and chief technology officer. India represents about 7 percent of the company’s sale inAsia-Pacific, which have grown from $420 million in 1991 to $1.6 billion in2002. “Our initial work at the centre will include embedded software forappliances as well as engineering design and analysis for a number of products, ranging from motors and compressors to process control equipment,” Ledford said.

PwC to promote Novell’s security solutions
Onward Novell Software has recently tied up with PwC to promote their secure identity management solutions in India. As part of the understanding, Onward Novell and Pricewaterhouse Coopers specialists have started working on Novell’s secure identity management solutions using jointly developed methodologies. The joint team would be launching a nationwide campaign addressing the top management of companies for creating awareness of secure identity management solutions in their organisation. PwC is also setting up a centre of excellence at its Kolkata facility for Novell secure identity management solutions.

Newgen eyes 40 percent of BPM and DM marketshare
Newgen Software Technologies is targeting a 40 percent marketshare of the business process management (BPM) and document management (DM) market in India. It is also trying to position itself as the leader in the BPM and DM space in India and abroad. The prospective growth areas for the company are verticals like banking, financial services, insurance, telecom and the BPO sector. In case of its global initiatives, the company plans to leverage its stronghold in verticals such as BPO, banks, insurance, telecom and government to generate Rs 135 crore of revenues by 2005. BPM is the blending of process management, workflow and imaging with application integration technology to automate processes and enable process monitoring and control.

Seacom ties up with NCR
Seacom Solutions India, a retail solutions company has signed an agreement with NCR Corporation to take care of NCR’s retail thrust on the emerging petroleum retailing segment. As per the agreement, Seacom will handle the first level of service, supported by NCR infrastructure through 46 service centres across the country. Seacom will initially offer the services directly to customers, but intends to develop a channel for the products to get a larger marketshare. The complementary mix between the Seacom range of software products and the NCR range of hardware will ensure substantial value addition to both businesses, said Robert Sesse, marketing manager South East Asia, NCR Corporation Ajay Aggarwal, CEO and MD, Seacom, said that so far Seacom has offered solutions based on its product suite SmartShop, and tailor-made solutions using its domain skills to large and medium retailers. Seacom will now be able to offer comprehensive solutions with both hardware and software put together, which most customers would prefer.

MEDICOM consolidates its position in South Africa
MEDICOM, an enterprise healthcare software maker has been selected by the Gauteng provincial government, South Africa for implementing its hospital information system solution. MEDICOM has been successfully installed at 15 hospitals/healthcare establishments, including the world’s largest hospital—the 3,200-bed Chris Hani Baragwanath hospital. MEDICOM provides healthcare organisations with a set of industry-specific best practices and latest technology, empowering them to consistently deliver better customer experiences and establish enhanced customer relationships.