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Brief
Oracle OpenWorld: Bullish about India
The year has certainly started with good news for Indian IT business. First
came the news about Cisco’s continued interest in the Indian markets, followed
by the announcement of a chip fabrication plant by AMD and SemIndia, then Bill
Gates came calling with a promise to invest $1.7 billion over the next four
years.
Oracle made its announcement at its Open-World global technology and business
conference in Mumbai that saw the participation of 1,800 customers and partners.
The growing importance of India in Oracle’s plan can be gauged from the
fact that it is one of the two countries in the Asia Pacific region to host
the meet in the company’s current financial year, June 2005 to May 2006.
Addressing a select media meet at the OpenWorld, Charles Phillips, President,
Oracle, announced that the company is ramping up the expansion of its operations
in India. It expects to increase its headcount in the country to 10,000 from
the current 8,600 over the next eight months. It also plans to have its presence
in nine non-metro cities: Ahmedabad, Chandigarh, Coimbatore, Indore, Jaipur,
Kochi, Lucknow, Pune and Vishakhapatnam.
These additional resources will be in the areas of sales and marketing, product
development, consulting, product support and services. Oracle India employs
17 percent of its total worldwide staff of 51,000.
According to the analyst firm IDC, IT spending among Indian organisations was
projected to reach over $9 billion by the end of 2005 and over $17 billion by
the end of 2009.
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Indian organisations are
moving faster towards embracing more flexible and scalable information
systems based on Grid Computing in an earnest bid to support and manage
their speedy, but unpredictable growth.
The Oracle Grid Index maps
the world’s journey to Grid Computing based on three
underlying indices: Foundation Readiness, Knowledge &
Interest, and Adoption Lifecycle. India’s Oracle Grid
Index moved from 2.9 to 4.4, registering the fastest Grid
Index growth (52 percent) worldwide. The report reveals that
India leads the world in perceptions of moving towards a Grid
IT environment, with 60 percent of the organisations polled
stating that a Grid-based, IT infrastructure
was inevitable or probable. Moreover, nearly half (48 percent)
of organisations polled have already made or are in the process
of embracing Grid technology. These results also indicate
an increased awareness of enabling technologies such as Service
Oriented Architecture and Blade Servers. India’s adoption
of Grid technology almost doubled over the last six months,
from 1.4 to 2.6 as noted in the Adoption Lifecycle sub-index.
This number is significant as it has moved from being the
lowest in the Asia Pacific region to one of the highest in
a mere six months.
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Oracle plans to increase its partner network to support its reach across all
the industry segments (especially SMBs) and 15 major cities. It currently has
275 partners in India after adding 75 in 2005. “The fast rate of development,
high literacy rates, and availability of IT skills in each of these cities represent
an untapped reservoir of future economic wealth for India,” said Phillips.
Phillips repeated Oracle’s commitment to the Indian
customer by saying that the company had invested about $2 billion over the last
two decades in India. Derek Williams, Executive Vice-president, Oracle Asia
Pacific added, “We feel the next wave of opportunities is the SMB segment
and the rural sector where the e-governance initiative is being taken by the
government.”
Rajesh Hukku with Charles Phillips |
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The media meet was also addressed
by Rajesh Hukku, CMD, i-flex. He along with Charles Phillips cleared the
various aspects of the synergies with Oracle. The latter has no plans
to interfere in the working of i-flex or integrate it like other acquisitions.
Both companies will work together and attempt to build synergies. On the
role of Oracle and the decision to align i-flex solutions with it, Hukku
said, “Oracle was not a new company for us. We had worked with them
earlier for 10 years. What was heartening was that Oracle did not wish
to take over i-flex but wanted to work with our management vision of being
an Indian company working globally.”
He stated that the association
would allow them to leverage their individual reach and expertise in the
market. “We have already seen traction and synergy in terms of Oracle
having the relationship as well as sales and marketing muscle around the
world. Though we have the world’s best core banking solution, we
do not have the market reach,” added Hukku.
There are no plans to integrate
the operations of the two companies, but i-flex will have Oracle officials
on its board; in the future, they may work closely at the technology level
too. Meanwhile, i-flex continues to operate as an individual entity. Explained
Hukku, “We continue to work with companies like IBM. At the end of
the day, the user will choose the technology he wants. Every company that
Oracle has taken over, be it Siebel, PeopleSoft or i-flex, is doing a
specific job in its own segment. The only advantage that we offer to an
end-customer is the ability to create an architectural environment where
these can be integrated.”
Oracle recently announced
that it is reselling i-flex’s Reveleus solution as part of its enterprise
compliance and risk management platform for the financial service industry.
Oracle has an installed base of more than 8,500 banking customers, of
which 1,500 are customers for its applications. i-flex has a base of 595
customers in 115 countries.
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As a part of OpenWorld, Oracle announced the 22 Indian e-governance project
winners. The awards showcase IT projects that have significantly improved their
communities through effective citizen services delivery and excelled at providing
innovative solutions to raise the standards of good governance.
The projects were implemented by the National Informatics Centre (NIC), the
Department of Information Technology, and the Government of India. The shortlisted
projects were judged on several parameters including effectiveness in delivering
project objectives, innovation, relevance and the replicability of these projects.
N Vijayaditya, Director General, NIC said, “The commitment of all agencies,
both public and private, is essential for building the e-government infrastructure
in India.” According to Skoch Consu-ltancy’s findings, more than 46
percent of Indian e-governance projects in 2005 used applications or services
from the NIC stable.
Some of the award-winning projects included the Andhra Pradesh government’s
e-governance initiatives such as the rural e-Seva project, computer-aided administration
of the registration department, and e-Panchayat.
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