The Day of the SIs

Till recently Kolkata and, in general, Eastern India was lagging behind mired
in the backwaters of the country's IT landscape. Not only did this part of the
country record the lowest PC penetration, even corporates and the government
sector were little inclined towards automation. Consequently, system integrators
in Kolkata were as rare to find as a normal working day during a bandh in the
city. But just as the scenario has dramatically changed vis-à-vis bandhs in the
city, even system integrators of Kolkata are gradually coming of age-many of
them are now even coming into national limelight.

So what transpired in the last couple of years that allowed these system
integrators to dream big? Santanu Ghosh, Chairman, Xenitis Infotech, who is
revolutionizing the PC market in the country has an interesting explanation.
"If you compare with most Indian cities, Kolkata's overall contribution
to the ICT market is not really abysmal. The problem is that till now Eastern
India does not have a secondary feeder market for IT; therefore, literally, the
Eastern Indian market is equal to the Kolkata market. Look at other regions,
nowhere is this the case; Bangalore in the South has Chennai and Hyderabad,
Mumbai in the West has Pune and Ahmedabad, while Delhi in North has the entire
NCR, Chandigarh and Lucknow." Ghosh's contention does have some merit-within
West Bengal, the other towns are much smaller compared to Kolkata, which is
surrounded by Orissa, Bihar and Jharkhand-some of the poorest and
underdeveloped ones in the country. And development in the North-East has always
been compromised by the insurgency problem.

However, Kolkata system integrators like Minisoft and Epitom Networks admit
that though this has been the case for so long, things are changing for sure
now. Says Rajarshi Ghosh, executive director, Epitom Networks, "We are
witnessing large networking projects coming from the West Bengal districts and
even from the North-East." His action corroborates his words: Epitom
already has a direct presence through a branch in Guwahati. Mahesh Lodha, MD,
Minisoft agrees that North-East is gradually becoming a lucrative territory for
system integrators; particularly because of large government sector domains like
railways and oil and private sectors like tea are gradually starting to automate
their divisions/units in the North-East. And owing to geographical proximity,
system integrators from Kolkata are bagging a majority of these orders.

Some of the large-scale automation projects in the North-East in recent times
include the existing fiber in campus network expansion in the IOCL premises in
Guwahati. Not only was the project undertaken by Epitom Networks completed with
redundancy in links, a large part of it was also in wireless networking. Both
Ghosh and Lodha concur that WLAN can be an extremely viable solution in the
North-East, considering the geographical hindrances posed by a difficult
terrain. Even fixed wireless handsets have a tremendous market in the
North-Eastern states, believes Pravir Jalan, director, Jalan Infotech who has an
exclusive agreement with Tata Indicom for the Eastern part of the country.
"I would say Reliance never focused on Fixed Wireless phones particularly
in the North-East, while Tatas, hopefully, are not repeating the same
mistake."

Minisoft had undertaken another large networking project for IOCL at its
Bongaigaon refineries. Even the Tea Board has undertaken a number of networking
projects in different tea gardens in the North-East-it has also given Minisoft
an extension order for LAN connectivity from its three locations of Guwahati,
Siliguri and Kolkata. Also, ONGC Guwahati has recently gone for a major
networking project. Epitom, on the other hand, has undertaken the campus
networking of Tezpur University in Assam and another project for Arunachal
Pradesh PWD department. The high priority given to IT automation by the
governments of different North-Eastern states was evident from the powerful
presentation made by Assam CM Tarun Gogoi and IT Ministers of Manipur, Meghalaya,
Mizoram, Nagaland and Arunachal Pradesh during Infocomm 2004 in Kolkata.

Assam is connecting 219 blocks under ASWAN (Assam State Wide Area Network) as
well as bringing PCs to more than 200 schools by next year. Manipur has
commissioned a large STPI at Imphal. Meghalaya is setting up Community
Information Centers upto the block level. Mizoram has drawn up an IT Task Force
under the chairmanship of the CM. However, lest everyone gets carried away by
this North-Eastern euphoria, Lodha sounds a warning that insurgency is still a
problem. "I have to get insurance for each of my engineers working in the
North-East, and this puts additional overheads on system integrators."

It is not only the North-East, one of the main reasons for thriving SIs in
Kolkata is the quantum of projects now available throughout the state as also to
neighboring states such as Jharkhand and Orissa. Kolkata-based netGuruIndia has
recently bagged a major e-governance project in Jharkhand while Epitom has
completed a Rs 40 lakh campus network maintenance project for Interm Missile
Testing Range in Chandipur, Orissa. Even Syntech has tied up with Kalinga
Institute of Technology for servicing their campus infrastructure. What has
helped is the gradual emergence of the Asansol-Durgapur, Haldia and Siliguri
belts in West Bengal as potential areas for increasing IT adoption. Some of the
major projects in recent times in West Bengal and neighboring states in the
private sector are listed below: the last mile wi-fi of the Metropolitan Area
Network (MAN) of CESC, networking in BE College, Shibpur, networking 13
locations of Eveready Industries, LAN project in Haldia Petrochemicals, complex
networking project in MN Dastur, VSNL server maintenance in Daltonganj and
Hazaribagh in Jharkhand, Tata Teleservices infrastructure maintenance in
Jamshedpur, disaster recovery site for Exide (all executed by Epitom); Asansol
Engineering College, REC-Durgapur, Falta SEZ, IOCL, Mourigram, Siliguri
Institute of Technology, NNIT, TCS Kolkata, Techno India campus, NBCC and Park
Hotel Kolkata (all implemented by Minisoft); and BC Roy Institute of Technology
and HIT executed by Syntech.

However, the biggest boost for the integrators has come with the widespread
automation exercise undertaken by the West Bengal government. After years of
lackadaisical lethargy, the government is aggressively bringing almost every
sphere of administration under the aegis of IT. While large projects like WBSWAN
and FACTS for West Bengal Police have gone to national system integrators like
Tata Infotech and CMC respectively, even the local SIs are having their share of
the pie. Says Milon Chakraborty, MD, Syntech Informatics, "Government
orders are now pouring in large numbers, even from the districts and the payment
terms are quite lucrative." Syntech has completed a Rs 8.5 crore project
for computerization of 200 schools in West Bengal and a Rs 4 crore project for
computerization of all 500 thanas (police stations) across West Bengal. It has
recently also undertaken the computerization and networking of the Kolkata
Police HQ at Lalbazaar (world's second oldest organized Police force HQ
modeled after Scotland Yard). Epitom completed the pilot of an IP surveillance
project with 24 DVI antennas in Hill Cart Road for the West Bengal Police in
Siliguri. It has also undertaken a fiber backbone project under Railtel for
Eastern Railway and SE Railway and a steerable antenna-based wi-fi project for
IIM Joka. Lodha informs that Minisoft has recently completed a WLAN project for
the new BPCL office in Kolkata. He adds, "One particular trend in most
projects here is that the SLAs are not very stringent, but the client expects
24x7 maintenance, with the integrator needing to be ready at every beck and
call, even at odd hours."

Beyond West Bengal, some SIs like Syntech have been fairly successful with
projects even in neighboring countries like Bangladesh, Bhutan and Nepal.
However, all are not too keen to go across the border. While some feel there are
insurgency turmoils in Nepal and Bhutan, some feel that there is often confusion
over payment terms in Bangladesh, leading to non-payments. Many of these SIs are
rather going national. Minisoft closed at Rs 5 crore, the same is what Epitom
did. A large portion of Syntech's Rs 58 crore turnover comes from its SI
business only. The future indeed looks rosy for the once much-maligned Kolkata
system integrators.

Rajneesh De