Bangalore IT.COM goes global - Cover Story

Bangalore IT.C OM, perhaps India’s largest IT show today, has attracted large corporate sponsors this year. Despite a few hiccups, once again Bangalore IT.COM 2003 will be bigger and better, says Akhtar Pasha

Bangalore IT.COM 2003 is following Gartner’s hype curve (initial hype, maturity, adoption and saturation). Having crossed the initial hype phase it has matured into a global event now. For the sixth year in succession, the event will be held in Bangalore from November 1-5. D B Inamdar, minister of state for IT and Tourism, government of Karnataka says, “This year’s event will be larger and more interesting with the participation of some 350 firms, and large companies sponsoring the event.” Some 500 delegates from 16 foreign companies and 2,500 conference delegates will attend the show. With the first two days of the event being holidays, officials expect a huge turnout. 70,000 entrepreneurs, corporate buyers, decision-makers, visionaries and tech gurus from international markets across the US, Europe, South East Asia as well as from domestic companies are expected to attend.

Union minister for Communications, Information Technology and Disinvestment, Arun Shourie, will be the chief guest this year. The closing will be equally spectacular with National Institute of Fashion Technology arranging a fashion show. Mahesh B, joint director, Software Technology Parks of India (STPI) says, “Bangalore IT.COM 2003 provides a platform for trade, technology and solutions for generating significant business leads. Last year, during one such conference in Bangalore IT.COM, Singapore Computer Systems (SCS) met with Kshema Technologies. A few months later it picked up a 30 percent stake, valued at $9.2 million, in Kshema.”

Abraham Thomas, managing director, IBM India says, “Bangalore IT.COM is a premier event, which is uniquely positioned to cover the entire spectrum of IT users from students to the corporate.”

Bangalore IT.COM 2003 will have 11 pavilions (two more than last year), spread over 20,000 square metres, a third more than in 2002. Besides Karnataka, Chandigarh, West Bengal, Haryana, New Delhi, Andhra Pradesh, Orissa and Gujarat will participate in the event.

Several countries, including Sweden, Russia, Germany, Belgium, Mauritius, UK, USA, China, Canada, Taiwan and Thailand will also be represented at the event.

This year IT.COM will emphasise on the SME (small and medium enterprise) segment. The SME pavilion will be situated right next to the IT Nations pavilion. Mahesh says, “The idea is to facilitate increased interaction between SMEs and foreign companies.” Organisers will try and arrange one-on-ones with SMEs that have their eye on foreign markets so that they an explore tie-ups with foreign companies.

Special pavilions, such as BPO, Spectrum, IT Nations, STPI, Communications, IT States, Software Solutions and Infrastructure are carried over from previous years. The two new pavilions are IT Giants and Knowledge and R&D. eSecurity, the third new pavilion, has been merged with the Software pavilion as it did not generate much interest among network security companies.

28 companies have confirmed their sponsorship of the event. This number is expected to increase in the last two weeks before the show kicks off, say organisers. The presence of IT giants such as AMD, IBM, Intel, Ramco Systems, TCS and Ernst &Young underscores the importance of Bangalore IT.COM.

AMD is the lead sponsor [platinum sponsor]. Having established its Indian operations, the company’s business strategy will be to woo enterprises (both large and small) and end-customers towards its recently released Athlon 64-bit processor for PCs and notebooks. Sanjeev Keskar, country manager, AMD Far East says, “Bangalore IT.COM 2003 has come at the right time when our focus is on Athlon 64. We wouldn’t get a better place to showcase our latest processors.” The other focus will be to put the spotlight on the Opteron, AMD’s 64-bit server chip. Since its launch in April 2003, Opteron-based servers are being used by the likes of jadooWorks, whose entire studio runs on an Opteron server, and the Indian Institute of Management, Bangalore. AMD has donated an Opteron server to iiit-B (Indian Institute of Information Technology, Bangalore) for its lab.

Keskar adds, “IT.COM is an opportunity to make inroads into state government departments and show Karnataka chief minister S M Krishna the value we are bringing to the state.”

AMD is participating in the IT Giants pavilion and has named its booth ‘Planet 64’. The booth will have two distinct sections, AMD@Home and AMD@Enterprise. The idea is to showcase AMD Athlon 64 PCs and Opteron-based servers. AMD@Home will host LAN gaming, featuring popular games such as Quake III and Unreal Tournament and applications such as digital video editing. “There will be quizzes every hour and lucky draws at regular intervals. The latest IBM servers using AMD Opteron processors and also the brand new Acer Ferrari 3000 notebook are expected to be on display,” says Keskar.

Intel is pushing Wi-Fi through the knowledge summit. Joydeep Basu, director, Corporate Technology Group at Intel India says, “Intel plans to bring Wi-Fi and broadband closer to the end-user to build tomorrow’s IT nation.” Intel’s strategy will be to showcase Wi-Fi and the benefits of wireless broadband for SMEs. Basu added that broadband was slow to kick off because of the ad-hoc rollout in the country that’s been mainly driven by cable TV operators. Things have changed in the recent past as large telecom players such as BSNL, Dishnet, Bharti, Reliance Infocomm and Tata Teleservices are driving this market now.

IBM, on the other hand, is going to talk about the adoption of Linux and other open source software by governments and enterprises. Abraham Thomas, managing director, IBM India, will talk on open source and e-government on demand. He says, “IBM India has been closely working with the government of Karnataka on various initiatives.”

STPI has provided Internet bandwidth for Bangalore IT.COM from day one. This time however, there’s a difference. Don’t be surprised if you see corporate presentations using streaming live video and audio, and companies connecting to their US corporate network using secure VPN tunnelling.

STPI has increased Internet bandwidth two and half times. It is providing dedicated 10 Mbps international bandwidth to the venue at Palace Grounds and another 10 Mbps to the Students Internet World at Kanteerva stadium from three routing points—Mumbai, Cochin and Chennai. Last year there were two VSAT gateways offering 4 Mbps bandwidth at both locations.

That’s not all. The entire network is running on fibre, which will considerably reduce latency in voice or delays in the data transmission. There is an additional 10 Mbps interconnection planned as a failover mechanism, operating between SPTI’s NOC (Network Operating Centre) located in Electronics City, connecting Palace Grounds and Students Internet World. Additionally, STPI is keeping 10 Mbps spare capacity on satellite to meet any eventuality.

If you have a wireless LAN card attached to your notebook PC or a Centrino-based notebook, Sify is providing Wi-Fi points at all pavilions, the business centre, the media centre and cybercafe. Srikant Joshi, president, Access Media, Sify says, “Sify will transform the venue into a Wi-Zone HotSpot. We have already earmarked the various areas that need to covered within range and all the necessary work on making Wi-Fi available is in progress.”

Sify’s focus would be to showcase the potential of wireless broadband in homes and small-businesses. Sify broadband for Home, the iWay chain of cybercafes, Way2Talk Internet Telephony, iMeet video conferencing, Sify SME Solutions and Sify Wi-Zone (Wi-Fi) would be the range of broadband-driven services from Sify to be showcased at BangaloreIT.COM 2003. The Net provider will be setting up a full-fledged Sify iWay broadband cybercafe and a Sify Way2Talk Internet Telephony booth in addition to Wi-Fi enabling the entire venue.

Training is on the agenda as part of the Knowledge & R&D pavilion. New Horizons, IIHT, Animaster, Edurite and Jetking are participating. New Horizons India, a joint venture between New Horizons Worldwide and Shriram Global Technologies, opened its Delhi centre in November 2002. The company has opened a centre in Bangalore recently. Pankil Shah, associate president, New Horizons India says, “Bangalore IT.COM 2003 offers us a platform to inform corporate and individual clients of the range of training we offer, including Microsoft Certified Systems Engineer, Cisco Certification Networking Engineer, Oracle, Red Hat and CompTIA (training and certification programme).” Ranbaxy, Bank of America and Apar Infotech are some of its corporate customers in India.

The state government is keen on boosting IT training for common man. As a special focus, the Karnataka government has set up Yuva.com. It is an IT training scheme conceived by the Department of Information Technology and the Department of Rural Development that was launched as part of Mahiti—the Government of Karnataka’s Millennium IT Policy, announced in March 2000. The idea is to train educated unemployed youth in IT skills. The trainees under Yuva.com will be charged a special fee, less than the normal fee charged and the scheme is currently offered by four agencies—Aptech, KEONICS, NIIT and SSI. Each Yuva.com centre can accommodate about 500 students per year. The government’s role is limited to offering the subsidy of up to Rs 1,500 for courses up to a duration of three months and up to Rs 4,500 for courses up to a duration of six months. Preference will be given to candidates whose family income is less than Rs 24,000 per annum, to women and people from rural areas.

The state government is also exploring opportunities in the BPO segment through the BPO Skills Assessment Test (B-SAT) to identify and harness the existing talent pool for the BPO (Business Process Outsourcing) sector. B-SAT is conducted by the Board for IT Education Standards (BITES), with MeritTrac as an assessment partner. B-SAT will be another focus area at Bangalore IT.COM 2003.

Industry bullish on Bangalore IT.COM 2003.

Iomega is participating for the first time at Bangalore IT.COM 2003. It says that its objective is to get visibility and create awareness as it is entering into a new business area—network storage. Sanjeev Gupta, senior business development manager, Asia South, Iomega Pacific says, “Iomega will be displaying its range of storage solutions from desktop storage (such as Zip, CD-RW, portable hard drives, USB mini drives) to SME back office storage (NAS servers). The focus shall be on the networked storage solutions display where we are making an entry.” No special promotions have been worked out, however.

Gupta says, “Our aim is to get mindshare from an IT professional’s need for backing up critical data, and to showcase the complete range of products offered by Iomega.”

But some old exhibitors aren’t making an appearance this year. Gururaja K Upadhya, director-Technical support, Cerebra Integrated Technologies says, “Having established our brand name in our earlier participation at IT.COM, it makes no sense for us to participate this year too. There are no serious enquiries or significant leads generated from this event. Hence, we are not participating.”

Ananth Koppar, president & CEO, Kshema Technologies, says, “Bangalore IT.COM is an excellent medium of getting international and local exposure. We are building our local presence here. It will help us strengthen our IPO plans and in attracting a rich talent pool. As Bangalore IT.COM is getting commercialised with more foreign companies participating, we are looking at establishing an international presence through partnership.” Last year, the company was the subject of interest from Belgium and France for the same.

R Manikandan, DGM-Sales & Marketing, LG Electronics India says, “Bangalore IT.COM is a high-exposure event attracting senior officials from government and enterprises, besides end-consumers. The show provides a platform for launching new products and creating awareness in the market. This year LG’s focus will be on the launch of desktop Linux-based PCs for home and the SOHO segment (small office home office), starting from Rs 33,000 upwards.” A tremendous amount of enquires were generated for LG’s LCD monitors last year.

Srikant Joshi, president, Access Media, Sify, says, “We expect this event to reiterate our position as the country’s leading Internet company. We aim to get consumers, and small and medium enterprises to understand and experience our suite of services at close quarters.”

Texas Instruments India had been participating for the past five years. M Harish, business development manager, TI India, says, “Our hands are full as we are driving the ‘Hardware Summit’ organised by CII, MAIT and the government of Karnataka, beginning from November 5, 2003. We would have loved to participate at Bangalore IT.COM 2003 but this event [Hardware summit] is high on our agenda.”

Remote printing, courtesy WeP Peripherals

WeP Peripherals is the official printing service provider at Bangalore IT.COM 2003. It will be demonstrating a remote printing solution at the show. The company has set up kiosks in each of the ten pavilions. These kiosks are connected to the Internet and each kiosk has mono and colour laser printers. Each participant in the show is being provided with private space for storing documents and presentations. Any individual or company can log into www.wepprint.com using secure authentication and print sitting in any of the pavilions. The company expects last minute printing requirements from participants. S Thomas Suresh Anand, head-WeP Smart and CTO of WeP Peripherals says, “We are using this event as an opportunity to introduce the concept of remote printing by arranging a live demo at each pavilion.”

Highlights of the show

DaysNovember 1-5LocationPalace Grounds and Kanteerva StadiumTotal area20,000 square metres PavilionsIT Nations, IT Giants, Spectrum, IT States, Knowledge & R&D, STPI, Software Solutions, Infrastructure, BPOImportant conference to attendOpen Source summit & IT for common manKnowledge summitThe Global Outsourcing summite-Governance SummitTiECON Bangalore 2003Highlights Large IT Nation pavilionsIncreased focus on B2B interactionsCEO Conclave to stimulate discussionNew pavilions (IT Giants, Knowledge & R&D and Communication)Regular featuresStudents Internet World (300 PCs) at Kanteerva stadiumRural IT quiz (organised by TCS)

Who’s in, who’s out
Company			Reason for participating/opting out
IBM	In		IBM is participating because of its close association with the government of Karnataka. It makes sense to participate in the show as IBM is pushing open source and Linux adoption.
AMD	In		AMD will be showcasing its recently launched Athlon 64 CPU for desktops and notebooks and the Opteron for servers.
TCS	In		Sponsoring Rural IT quiz.
Ramco	In		-
IomegaLG			Iomega wants to create awareness about its recently launched network storage products and entry-level NAS boxes. The other focus will be to showcase secondary storage devices such as USB mini-drives.
Electronics India	In		For LG Bangalore IT.COM 2003 is a high-exposure event and the best platform to launch new products. LG will focus on LCD monitors and Linux-based PCs for the home and SOHO market.
Sify	In		Sify will try to get mileage for its latest offering—120 wireless broadband hotspots in Bangalore.
Kshema Technologies	In		The show will help Kshema in building is local brand and bolster its IPO plans. It will also be an opportunity to meet foreign delegates through whom it can set up operations abroad.
Texas Instruments India		Out	TI has opted out of this event as it is driving the Hardware Summit organised by CII, MAIT and Government of Karnataka to be held on November 5.
Cerebra Integrated Tech		Out	No serious business enquires have been generated by participating in previous years.
Microland		Out	The Microland Group caters to overseas customers and does not see any continued synergy with the show.
Sun Microsystems		Out	Sun feels that Bangalore IT.com is a general show whereas its target audience is more focused.
Source: Vendors


Issue dated - 03rd November 2003
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