eFORCE chooses Calcutta as South Pacific HQ

CALCUTTA: eFORCE, a global provider of strategic e-business solutions, has

set up its South Pacific headquarters in Calcutta. The company, headquartered in

Silicon Valley and with offices throughout North America and Europe, provides

e-business solutions in the areas of B2B, B2C, corporate portals and mobile

commerce. The company plans to open its second office in the region at Chennai

within the next few months.

The company provides Internet solutions, especially in areas like e-commerce

strategy, architecture, branding, integration and implementation. Its clients

include companies from the Global 1000 league like FedEx, Charles Schwab and

Nortel Networks and partners such as Sun Microsystems, iPlanet and Exodus.

With the acquisition of I-Kinetics Inc., an enterprise working on Java

technology integration, "eFORCE with its strategic location at Calcutta has

managed to make I-Kinetics accessible to the growing worldwide demand for

eBusiness services," said eFORCE senior director Amitabh Maulik. According

to eFORCE, I-Kinetics had started its operations in Calcutta in 1998, much ahead

of its takeover by eFORCE in July 2000. "eFORCE Calcutta is playing a major

role in creating a strategic global niche for eFORCE Inc," added Maulik.

With a team strength of around 40, including software professionals and

administrators, the company had started its software operations in September

with a 256 kbps leased line from VSNL.

The team is already engaged in various applications based on J2EE, Corba,

iPlanet Portal, etc., on Windows, Solaris and HPUX. The focus is on e-business

migration of established companies with heterogeneous legacy systems, which

require the use of multiple software technologies.

The other activities of eFORCE in the South Pacific region besides client

project delivery would be in the area of evaluating R&D and benchmarking

off-the shelf solutions in addition to supporting the IT infrastructure

requirements of the company.