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Follow UsIreland's unprecedented success as a software superpower in
recent years has logically led to a number of Irish software companies looking
at collaborating with Indian companies. The nature of collaboration varies:
obviously back office development in India is the most common activity, though a
few have also started looking at India as one of the markets for consumption of
their products.
The Indo Irish collaboration theme received a tremendous boost
in early 2006 when Irish Software Association (ISA), the principal trade
association for the Irish software industry, signed an MoU with Nasscom to
foster better links between the software sectors of the two countries. The ISA
delegates consisting of 20 software companies including the likes of Qumas,
SteelTrace, Prime Carrier, OpenMind Networks and Fineos among others were in
India as part of an Irish trade mission.
The ISA trade delegation explored opportunities to develop new
markets and enhance cooperation between Irish and Indian companies. Other than
developing India as a new market for Irish products, these companies looked at
certain specific areas where a collaboration with India could boost the fortunes
of the Irish companies. These included the licensing of technology to improve
existing products and services as well as access to large scale testing
laboratories, which are widely available in India but not in Ireland./dq/media/post_attachments/b95ca34a35eba49de69d0b27efe96f67d3af67df68f63a71b4fc99fddbc5dc94.jpg)
In addition to the Nasscom-ISA agreement, a Scientific and
Technological Co-operation Agreement was also inked between Ireland and India.
The modalities agreed included reciprocal visits of scientists, researchers,
technicians and trainees for visits, study tours and advanced studies, joint
research on projects and programs of mutual interest, organization of bilateral
scientific technical meetings and participation in conferences, symposia and
seminars as well as other forms of scientific and technological co-operation as
may be agreed by the parties. This could ensure a rub-off effect of the Irish
R&D strength on Indian software companies and foster an environment of
product development here.
Science Foundation Ireland (SFI) concluded a cooperation
Agreement with the Indian National Science Academy (INSA). This "agency to
agency" agreement, which gives practical effect to the Government to
Government agreement, will allow both parties to promote mutual bi-lateral
co-operation between both agencies in world class research in the areas of
Biosciences and Bioengineering (BioT) as well as ICT.
Another potential area of collaboration discussed between ISA
and Nasscom was how Indian companies could provide a quicker route to market for
Irish product companies that need to orient their offerings towards a Service
Oriented Architecture (SOA) method. This method has become part of the way many
of the largest Irish and international customers for software now approach their
purchases. However, talks about collaboration would remain incomplete without
discussing in detail the activities of few Irish companies who have already
taken the India plunge.
Office Companion
Dublin-based Softedge-Systems is a product-centric software solutions
provider in the areas of e-enablement and multimedia document generation.
Interactive Image Cutout is an image-editing technology that offers an
easy-to-use method for manipulating and moving objects in pictures and
photographs. "We provide user-friendly, cost-effective software products
like DocsAlive that allow non-technical users to create multimedia documents
and/or content," says Vikas Sahni, CEO, Softedge Systems.
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"Irish companies are |
Softedge has received due recognition from Microsoft. With the
unique IP Ventures program from Microsoft, Softedge has been able to realize
rapid growth and quick time to market. "Our core philosophy is to make it
easier for ordinary people to use computers and the Microsoft relation helps us
in this endeavor," explains Sahni. Microsoft has assisted Softedge to
promote DocsAlive as a companion product for its Office suite.
Other than having an Indian as the CEO (Sahni is a former
physics teacher from Delhi's St Stephen's College and has been in Ireland
since 1998), Softedge also has a strong Indian connection owing to having
offshored its coding task for DocsAlive to a team in Delhi. This has been part
of the company policy to outsource non-core work: India, though is not the sole
beneficiary, as some coding work has been contracted to Romania while order
fulfillment is taken care of by an Irish services company. The high-level design
and architecture for DocsAlive were however produced in-house. Another India
link for Softedge has been its product for the education sector that has found a
customer in Poddar International School in Mumbai.
Live TV on Mobile
Vimio PLC is another Dublin-based company that offers turnkey media distribution
solutions and content to mobile operators which enable multimedia content to be
delivered to mobile phones. This includes an advanced DRM (digital rights
management) system to prevent unauthorized copying of copyright protected
material. Live TV, full track music, video, karaoke, ring tones, true tones,
Java games, audio books and other mobile content can all be distributed with one
common distribution platform over CDMA, GPRS, EDGE and 3G networks.
Padraic Marren, VP, lists some of Vimio's advantages as a
content provider. "The DRM technology ensures digital rights integrity
while the jukebox technology prevents copying and sharing. The corollary
benefits include a simple pay-per-play revenue model as well as allowing rights
holders to control content availability." Incidentally, though the company
is Irish with HQ in Dublin, its R&D center is in Umea in Sweden. This
dichotomy however is a result of Vimio's patent being based on 20 years
R&D in signal compression at Umea University.
During 2006, Vimio entered into an agreement with Bharti
Telesoft to deploy TV services to mobile phone users in the Indian market. Under
the agreement, both Bharti Telesoft and Vimio have commenced the implementation
of the infrastructure required to deploy live TV on mobile phones in India. Says
Vimio CEO, Malachy Harkin, "This first stage roll out of live TV in India
is significant for Vimio. With long term exponential growth in mobile phone
usage predicted, India is an extremely important market for any supplier to the
mobile phone industry. We would expect commercial deployment of live TV to be
rolled out in early 2007."
|
"Collaborators,
Dataquest
India and Well, India has made enormous progress in ICT in recent times. And most of our companies here...well, we have most of the world's multinational companies that you have, and they're operating here in the European market. We have enormous foreign direct investment in the ICT space. So for us it made huge sense to see India as collaborators, not competition. For there are different markets. And many of our companies now have had good exchange and good cooperation with India. Most of the big companies here are looking at the Indian market. We like to think we are held in high esteem. We know India is held in high esteem. It is for us to build along a friendship. We're a small country, but we have been the biggest exporter in the world of software for a good number of years, and we're still in the top three, so it's a very good achievement for such a small country. Our sense is that we have made good strides in India in ICT, in pharma and biotech, and our approach has been, collaboration between companies. |
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Relating with Kolkata
Relate software, based in Tallaght, a Dublin suburb, was formed by the
management team of erstwhile Apex Software, at one time the largest supplier of
accountancy software in both Ireland and the UK. The legacy continues as today
Relate today offers a host of accounting related software, again popular in
Ireland and now growing in the UK market.
These include Relate DRIVE CRM (for accountants), Company
Secretary, Accounts Production while two other packages, the Personal Tax
Manager and Corporation Tax Manager would be launched in 2007. Claims Laurence
Pyzer, director, Relate Software, "DRIVE is the first package in Ireland
and the UK developed using C# and ASP.Net for the Microsoft.Net framework.
Unlike suppliers with legacy software that have been patched together for
partial integration, DRIVE has been written from the ground up."
This entire development work, however, did not happen in
Ireland, but took place in Kolkata in India. Relate has been maintaining the
back office development team in Kolkata since its Apex days in 1998. And Pyzer
today claims with pride that Kolkata was chosen as the back office venue at a
time when it has not become fashionable even in India. Dipak Guharoy, head of
the Kolkata facility who was present when this correspondent visited the Relate
office in Tallaght, claims with justifiable pride that there has been no problem
in delivery till now.
The Other Indians
CR2, a global provider of channel banking software, has gained good access
to the Indian market. It claims to be the only software supplier to provide a
fully integrated software solution enabling Intelligent Teller Machines. The
India connection is established through one of its development centers in
Bangalore-the other centers are in Dublin, Dubai, Perth, Johannesburg and
Singapore. In addition, TCS is also a system integrator of CR2 products
globally.
CR2 products have found a number of takers amongst banks in the
Middle East and Africa. Even in India, IndusInd Bank is a marquee customer for
its Net banking solution. Even Standard Chartered has implemented CR2's
Bankworld ATM system to connect to the Cashnet shared ATM network. Though CR2 is
continually beefing up its Bangalore operations, it has no plans to shift its
main development center from Dublin.
Ennis-based XL Technology Services, outsources development
services in India for US and UK firms through a joint venture with Softex of
Trivandrum. The JV firm, SoftEXL Technology Services, offerS offshore
development services to companies in the US and Europe from its base in
Trivandrum's technology park. It also provides facilities for and train and
manage local development teams who are employed by western companies. In
addition, the joint venture also has its own product development plans, based on
the use of web robot technology for automated information retrieval.
India's BFSI strength has historically attracted a number of
Irish companies. Banking components software developer Eontec was one of the
pioneers. It set up a parallel development centre back in the mid-1990s. More
recently PMI Software and Datalex, have subcontracted development work to Indian
partners.
Rajneesh De
rajneeshd@cybermedia.co.in