Indian firms fare well at Microsoft's Office solutions contest

BANGALORE: Indian software company, Sonata Software has won the Microsoft

Asia Productivity eXPerience Solutions Challenge (PESC). It won the contest with

its worXPace Portal, a productivity solution aimed at the FMCG vertical. The

results were announced by Microsoft through a media release.

The contest was aimed at Microsoft's Independent Solution Vendors (ISVs)

partners in the Asian region, providing them with an opportunity to test their

skills and readiness for the emerging productivity solutions market. A total of

22 solutions were created by participants across India and Asia using

Microsoft's Office XP, Windows XP and SharePoint Portal Server products. The

runners up were from Singapore, Hong Kong and Malaysia.

Besides Sonata, two other Indian companies made it to the semi-finals stage,

and these are Kshema Technologies Ltd. and Omnikron Systems India Pvt. Ltd. The

former has built a solution for the Pharmaceuticals industry, and the latter has

built a solution for the Agricultural vertical, called AgriSysXP.

Microsoft Corporation India Group marketing manager, Sanjiv Mathur said,

"Office XP is the perfect solutions platform for enterprises and we have

always been committed to helping our customers and partners build solutions that

are cost effective and leverage technologies that they are already familiar

with. The fantastic response for the PESC contest and Sonata winning the contest

in particular, has convinced us that the Indian market is now ready for

productivity based solutions and we definitely expect enterprise solutions to

become more pervasive."

Sonata's worXPace framework enables the sales and marketing resources of a

company with fast moving goods, to effectively collaborate with channel

partners, speed up decision making process and improve operational excellence.

Microsoft will be working closely with the winners to help them market their

solutions to target audiences.