ALKHOBAR, 17 July 2007 — Even with competition from other cities on the Subcontinent, Bangalore continues to attract technology investment. Narus, Inc., a provider of IP network security and traffic monitoring to telecom carriers and governments around the world, has opened a new development center as part of its existing subsidiary in Bangalore. The office will be the central location for Narus’ India-based software development, sustaining engineering, customer support and quality assurance teams. Additionally, the new center will serve as a sales office for the region.
SpectraLinear Inc., a provider of timing solutions for the consumer, computer and communication markets, has also moved forward with the opening of its India Technology Center in Bangalore.
“This will be our third design center, the second outside of the US and the first in the very dynamic Indian market,” said Arvinder Chadha, SpectraLinear’s VP of Operations. “The India Technology Center will focus on IC design, test and product engineering and production control supporting our fab team at Chartered Semiconductor in Singapore and our assembly and test operation in the Philippines. The Bangalore team will also work closely with our Asian customers, helping them to develop applications that depend on state-of-the-art timing technologies.”
SpectraLinear has hired industry veteran Amul Atri as MD of its India Technology Center. SpectraLinear is starting its India Technology Center with primarily design, test and product engineers. The company plans to hire up to 40 people in Bangalore, depending on market conditions.
From Chennai, Sify Limited has launched a new alliance with Microsoft India to empower Indians with Internet and IT services and help bridge the digital divide. Sify will participate in Microsoft’s Unlimited Potential program and help enable easy access for Microsoft’s initiatives in India through the reach of its over 3,500 strong “I-Way” cyber cafes, as well as through its home Internet access services.
Sify will offer its cyber cafe subscribers access to licensed Microsoft Office software to begin with, so that they can use the cafe as a virtual office. This will include training them in the use of MS Office for Microsoft Office Certification to increase their productivity and skills. Sify is also supporting Microsoft in bringing the industry together for the “IQ PC” initiative. The PC initiative, aimed at families with school going children, will include 100 hours of free Internet access. This is over and above the Microsoft suite and its partner offerings from Brilliant, Pacsoft, Edurite, etc. The alliance will also include other Microsoft Certification programs, affordable utility computing for the middle class and content for online education offered through the Sify I-Way cafes.
As more Indians become PC literate, there is growing use of technology in small and medium businesses (SMBs) in the country. From Kolkata, Access Markets International Partners (www.ami-partners.com) has released a report showing that SMBs in India are set to invest more than $480 million on storage products and services this year, up by over 35 percent over last year. Much of this growth will come from small businesses (SBs, or companies with up to 99 employees) which comprise 99 percent of India’s SMBs by number of firms.
“SBs tend to spend more on hardware-related storage items, such as PC-attached and server-attached storage to build a stable and robust storage infrastructure,” said Dev Chakravarty, Kolkata-based Analyst at AMI-Partners. “By contrast, medium businesses (MBs or companies between 100 and 999 employees) are adopting more advanced network-attached storage media such as SAN and NAS.”
About 60 percent of Indian MBs polled in an AMI survey indicated that increasing IT storage capacity and deployment of enhanced storage solutions will be a primary strategic focus area for them in the next 12 months.
A vital driver of the SMB storage market is the use of business applications solutions that are data-driven. However, their adoption is still at an embryonic stage for both SBs and MBs. “Yet, their rate of growth is quite healthy as SMBs appreciate their benefits,” commented Chakravarty. “This includes building long-term customer relationships and loyalty (for CRM) and integrating employees, business partners and branches in a chain where they can collaborate, access data from a unique data repository (for ERP). SMB expenditure on CRM and ERP applications is set to rise by about 20 percent and 10 percent, respectively, this year.”
Another boost comes from the deployment of websites and e-commerce applications. Their usage is increasing rapidly among Indian SMBs as they strive to use these marketing tools to access customers and suppliers. One other crucial parameter is a focus on security, with more than 50 percent of MBs and 30 percent of SBs citing security enhancement as a key technology area. “Adoption of security solutions such as data backup and disaster recovery solutions, replication of data, etc, entail a significant need for storage for SMBs,” noted Chakravarty. “More than 10 percent of SMBs plan to adopt applications including offsite data backup and disaster recovery in the next 12 months.”
But even with IT sales, services and technology adoption growing throughout the country, by the week’s end, the focus of the India IT community will be back in Bangalore.
Global IT Services provider Wipro Limited plans to announce results for the first quarter ended June 30, 2007 on Thursday, July 19, 2007. The results will be available in the Investor Relations section of the company website.
At 11:45 a.m. IST following the results announcement, Azim Premji, chairman of Wipro, and senior management will discuss the company’s performance for the quarter and answer questions. The management discussion and the question-answer session can be accessed through the Investor Relations section at www.wipro.com.
