American IT group enters India

BANGALORE: Acrodex, a privately held North American IT business group worth over $150 million, has entered India by making a strategic equity investment in an existing company, EISS Pvt Ltd. They are set to craft a new joint entity called aXcend Automation and Software Solution.

Based out of Bangalore, the new entity will leverage the global access, resources and expertise of the group to emerge as a predominant player in the area of real time connectivity of the enterprise to the shop floor. aXcend also announced the setting up of a full-fledged India Technology Center in Bangalore.

The CEO of aXcend Automation and Software Solutions, Uma Balakrishnan said, "We are extremely delighted about the partnership as it provides us the right platform to execute our plans of aggressively addressing the global market for such solutions. We have since set up a technology center here, are looking to ramp up our sales force and have set to aggressively grow our domestic and global market share and emerge as a preferred provider of end-to-end solutions in the manufacturing arena."

Outlining the strategy and future plans, she mentioned, "Our strategy is to come up with a series of software application products for the manufacturing sector evolved from the sensing and understanding the needs amongst users segment. We will continue to enhance service offerings by providing integration solutions providing connectivity to the leading enterprise application packages and automation platforms. On the same lines, M' Man Sys — a maintenance management system (MMS) product, from our product portfolio would be released by March 2005. The enhanced version with real time connectivity to plant equipment is expected to be released by the end of 2005."