Upfront

Dell’s expansion plans for India

Kevin Rollins, Chief Executive Officer, Dell, has announced that the company is expanding its operations in India by setting up its fourth customer contact centre at Gurgaon. Dell already has three such centres in Bangalore, Hyderabad and Mohali that are part of its 30-site global customer contact network.

The Gurgaon centre is expected to add 700 to 1,000 positions to Dell’s employee strength by the end of 2006. Rollins also said that the company plans to double the size of its product development team in India over the next two years based on its success in supporting its enterprise systems.

SAP, HP forge tie-up for SMB solution

SAP and HP have entered into a strategic alliance aimed at tapping the growing SMB segment. They will jointly work to push SAP’s new offering, Business One, a suite of business management tools for SMBs.

Srinivas Rao, Regional Director, SAP India said, “We have appointed HP as the national distributor for Business One. This alliance will help SAP leverage HP’s vast channel infrastructure to reach out to the SMB segment.”

HP India’s Director, Marketing and Alliances, Pallab Talukdar added, “HP will act as a single point of contact for Business One customers. It will assist SAP in pre-sales, channel sales and post-sales support.”

Emerging India awards

In recognition of the contribution and role of SMBs, ICICI Bank will be presenting the Emerging India Awards to these companies, drawing winners from 10 categories.

Under the ICE & ITeS sector, SMBs in hardware, data management information & standards, information technology and software applications will be targeted. Entry forms are available at ICICI Bank branches or details can be obtained by messaging SME AWARDS to 676766. Entries close on Feb 15, 2006.