BANGALORE, INDIA: B2B integration solution provider, GXS is an example of changing with the changing environment from self transition to the the social media, the company is following the global trend and looking at emerging markets for growth, with India at the focal point.

Speaking to Akanksha Prasad, Karl Salnoske, executive vice president, service delivery and CIO, GXS shared about the company, emerging trends and the India market.

Could you share a brief about your company and the offerings?

GXS provides business-to-business EDI and on-demand supply chain integration, synchronization and collaboration solutions to a number of verticals such as banking and financial services, retail, automotive etc. With 2009 revenues of $350 million, we operate the world's largest cloud platform for data integration today. We expect significantly accelerated growth this year, especially with our recent merger with Inovis.

Our growth engine is in B2B Managed Services. We are looking at expanding our market share in this segment. In 2009, we had a 63 per cent increase in the number of new companies adopting GXS Managed Services.

GXS Trading Grid is another segment. Today, it powers 24 of the world's top 25 supply chains. We recently announce our R&D collaboration extending GXS Trading Grid with Azure, their cloud platform.

In its recent report on technology trends, GXS mentioned about social media. Could you elaborate on that, and what is the company doing in this regard?

We see great opportunities in using social networking to advance B2B integration and are deploying tools to enable Human-Centric B2B. Our partnership with Rollstream is an example of this.

Corporations should start befriending their trading partners in the supply chain. There are various tools in social networking like Facebook that takes the relationship between trading partner to a new level. Social media tools should be looked beyond marketing initiatives. They can also help improving supply chain efficiencies, through community management.

Our upcoming venture with Rollstream would build next-generation community, where buyers and seller are no more corporations, businesses, but partners. We look forward to introducing more human element into the way we communicate. This would also work as a networking platform. There are about 10,000-20,000 suppliers and buyers, but there is no single platform to bring all of them together.

What are your plans regarding India?

We plan to grow the India team bigger and bigger. We do have significant revenues coming from India, in addition to our major investment in the India Technology Center. We are accelerating the business in Bangalore, not only the technology center but also as a market. We are setting up salesforce in the country to tap India-based firms. We have around 100 openings for technical talent for core product development and sales executives.

We do have significant revenue business in India, in addition to our major investment in the India Technology Center. Here are some of our most significant revenue generating initiatives. We implemented the Custom’s messaging gateway for translation between customs and its 5000 import and export companies for submission and receiving approvals for import/export. The project started in 2007.

Kale Logistics is another GXS customer. They are building an integrated logistics operation and exchange portal for the India logistics communities including air, land and sea. They are developing the applications using the GXS Enterprise Gateway product which provides the connectivity, integration and translation for their community.

We also have a business relationship with Wipro for customers who need local support in India. We also have a TradingGrid Messaging Services partner for India - GEMIS. They are strong in the auto and manufacturing industry.