Spotlight

Business applications simplified

By simplifying enterprise application development, Vaakya Technologies has created a new market opportunity in the Indian market says Mohd Shariff PA

Vaakya Technologies Pvt Ltd., aims to change the way in which enterprise applications are deployed. Gartner, Inc has named it a ‘Cool Vendor’ in its report titled ‘Cool Vendors in Application Development, 2007’. It has nourished the technology culture that has simplified the way enterprise applications are deployed in Indian organizations. CEO, Sudarsan K said, “As Indian SMBs migrate from legacy applications to standard enterprise applications—there is an opportunity for us.”

Vaakya is a six year old company and it has developed the entire technology stack from the ground up (desktop to client-server applications, application servers or even Web portals can be developed using its technology) and deployed on any platform—this is the equation that Vaakya has been following from its inception. The entire technology suite of Vaakya has been developed completely in India. Sudarsan said, “We are proud to admit that, in spite of many challenges such as talents and infrastructure, we could do all the processes right from the architectural stage to the finished product in India. Our solution is written in C.”

This is a conceptual embodiment of design and architectural patterns represented by the runtime engine. Vaakya believes that it needs to build a platform for software development including Web applications. Sudarsan said, “In nutshell Vaakya is an innovative, patent pending Distributed Computing Architecture, consisting of cross-platform, integrated infrastructure components such as a database, graphics engine, communications interface, client and server components within a tiny footprint which is less than 1.5 MB.” Economic growth India has opened up new channels for its products. In this scenario Vaakya enables developers to develop applications once and deploy them in standalone, client server or on a SaaS model without any rearchitecting being required. Vaakya builds simple technology tools that even domain specialists can understand and use to develop their own applications without depending on programmers.

Delivering value

The company intends to provide end-to-end application lifecycle tools, based on the theory of ‘development to deployment’. Solutions such as Vaakya Devo desktop and server and Vaakya App SA for rich client applications and Vaakya Web portal server (lite and professional) target individuals, small & medium businesses and even peripheral application users in large enterprises. The portal server’s features include simple Web Server configuration, a built-in database and a standalone runtime for local application management.

Sudarsan explained, “We will provide unlimited free e-mail Software Support and maintenance services for a period of 12 months from the effective date of purchase of Standard Edition products.” This could be extended after 12 months, such e-mail Software support and maintenance will be either provided free or be chargeable as per Vaakya’s relevant and then existing software support, maintenance and Upgrade Terms.

SMB-side story

Vaakya sees a new trend in the Indian IT market. There are many SMBs still struggling with legacy applications. As they are growing rapidly they need standards-based products that can sustain with their future growth. Additionally the market is also seeing another trend—a shift from traditional server-centric computing to grid computing. Indian business needs flexible applications that support all kinds of hardware protecting their investments in hardware. The cost factor is primarily dominating the Indian business scene and this can be addressed through flexible applications that the company has developed. There is a shift to collaborative rich client applications and executable programs that can be delivered over the Internet. Vaakya is trying to tap this opportunity.

A general application suite cannot apply to any business. Customization will be required. The ‘Vaakya Distributed Computing Architecture’ takes a comprehensive approach to address the demanding needs of design, development, deployment and maintenance aspects of distributed software applications. Vaakya’s intent is to provide various technology frameworks as products, for specific domains such as enterprise business applications, graphical and image processing applications, handheld and mobile applications and embedded and system applications. These frameworks built over the Vaakya Distributed Computing Architecture will provide the platform for development, delivery and deployment of dynamic, heterogeneous and distributed software applications.

An eye to the future

Looking at the Indian market Vaakya is confident about its growth here. It has two global customers and six domestic customers but since it has signed non-disclosure agreements with all of them, the company has still kept its customers names under wraps. Sudarsan said, “The Indian market has great potential where our technology can set a fantastic tone in the market. Despite market crashes, it is evolving at its best and IT is the enabler for all verticals of business.”

C at the core

Vaakya has built its technology stack using the C programming language on account of its closeness to the underlying hardware. This provides a better application programming interface to operating system functions. Sudarsan explains that most businesses cannot have experts in their organization, particularly amongst SMBs. In this scenario the solution that it provides, one that does not need any coding, will have a greater reach.

As of now Vaakya has filed four major patents for technology and business models for its significant computation architecture, abstract component models and framework oriented development approach. It has a novel and inventive proposition in its design and system. Sudarsan said, “This attitude has helped us file four patents in short period of time.”

mohammed.shariff@expressindia.com