Accel ICIM sets up Competency Centre

Nanda Kasabe

PUNE: Accel ICIM has set up a Competency Center that is unique to the western region of India. Addressing the need for ‘testing IT products’, the company has set up the center that enables testing of IT products before opting for a purchase since the vendors usually lack the necessary infrastructure or technical capability

Estimated at Rs.1 Crore, the center consists of a high tech lab using state of the art technologies. "We deal with products that are critical to the performance of the company and since they require high capital investment, it is important that the customer is absolutely sure of the solution or product that we offer to them," said Deepak Nambiar, General Manager- strategic accounts, Accel.

A lot of customers today are confused as to what to buy and not to buy. The idea behind the competency center is not only to train sales people before selling a product so that it becomes a proof of concept for the customer but also to offer an opportunity to ensure that they are indeed getting the best product, he explained. The company therefore undertakes the job of demonstrating to the customer the result, the ease and performance levels achieved while going in for the product.

How does this process work? Take the case of Kalyani Steel, a manufacturing company based in Pune. The company was using Oracle 7.13 on Alfa. Migration to Oracle to 8i on Sun Solaris was proposed. The feasibility was demonstrated at the center and Accel ICIM managed to bag an order for the Sun machine.

As Nambiar puts it, "We show the migration path (say from Informix older versions to Oracle’s latest version), practically before the customer can take a conscious decision." The center also does some benchmarking, where the customers can see for themselves the performance offered by the systems and the network.

The Competency Center has built a set-up of Ultra Sparc based four Sun Servers running robust Solaris Operating System along with a shared storage to make it function in a clustered environment. Various other software have been installed such as Oracle, 9iAS, iPlanet Suite of products. The center also showcases the capabilities of Citrix products.

Some of the other customers of the company include Zensar Technologies, Kirloskar Copeland, MSEB and the Indian Railways Institute of Civil Engineering. In addition, Accel ICIM offers corporate training in selected areas of technology. The training is conducted at Chennai and Pune.

Some of the subjects covered here include Solaris administration, database administration, Internet application, I-Planet, web server, application server and usage of Veritas storage products. "What sets us apart from other training institutes is that we offer customized training for corporate houses, assess their current level of competency and then design the course curriculum. Here again, the competency center is used to provide practical exposure", Nambiar added.



(CNS)