Atesto Tech to foray into India

NEW DELHI: Atesto Technology, a California-based software solutions start-up

company, is in talks with a number of Indian companies to offer fully hosted

services for automated testing and monitoring of Web applications for eBusiness.

The services offered include simulated testing to assess the ability to handle

traffic and performance testing wherein the former will be at the pre-launch

stage and the latter will be at the post-launch stage. The services will be

offered on the ASP model.

According to its president and CEO Dave Mukherjee, the services would cost at

least 50 per cent lesser than conventional methods and do away with the headache

of maintaining and upgrading expensive software to monitor the Web sites. He,

however, declined to name the companies as the talks were at an early stage

although he was confident that there would be takers for his service in India.

The services would be offered at three levels wherein the first tier would be

the Fortune 500 companies, the second tier would be the SME segment and the

third tier would be the mom and pop kind of set-ups. Each would have

differential pricing for the services offered.

Meanwhile, Astral India, the subsidiary of Astral Systems of the US, another

company promoted by Mukherjee, has stepped up its existing operations. Astral

Systems, which commenced operations in 1995, is working on Internet telephony

and applications based on the Internet. The company is establishing a second

development center in Calcutta, which will be much larger than the current one.

To that end, the company has acquired a 200-acre plot of land and is building a

state-of-the-art development center. The major activity of the center would be

to focus on incubating ideas and to work as an offshore center.

"The center will be different and will not be just a concrete

jungle," says Mukherjee. And he expects to spend more time at the center

encouraging developers to work on ideas that could be translated into products.

In fact, he says, "Atesto was the brainchild of my chief technology

officer. I liked the idea and prepared a summary and floated it around the

Valley for funds. And at a time when the Valley was reeling under the impact of

the Nasdaq crash, Atesto was funded by Draper Richards who had stopped all

funding activity especially to dotcoms."