IT majors join hands to provide e-biz solutions

CALCUTTA: The Indian subsidiaries of Intel, Compaq, i2 Technologies and

Pricewaterhouse Coopers have entered into a strategic alliance to offer

intelligent e-business (e-biz) solutions to the Indian industry. A dedicated

Center of Excellence (CoE), located at PwC's Technology Center in Calcutta, is

the first of its kind and will evaluate how these solutions can transform

organizations into high velocity enterprises. The CoE was inaugurated by Roopen

Roy, Partner-in-charge, MCS-India, Avtar Saini, Director (South Asia), Intel,

Balu Doraisamy, Managing Director, Compaq India and Raymond The, President

(Asia-Pacific), i2 Technologies.

The four technology majors would pool in their domain expertise and create a

team of skilled engineers to develop e-biz kits and solutions that can be easily

implemented for the client. The true end-to-end customer centric e-business

solutions including solutions for SCM, product life cycle management, customer

management, inter-process planning and strategic business planning will be

provided by i2. "We will provide the e-biz strategic and business process

consulting, implementation and training for i2's solutions, systems

integration, project management and change management services," said

Joydeep Dutta Gupta, Partner, PwC. "Compaq will provide the enabling

infrastructure on which critical applications will run. Intel will provide the

building blocks to set up this infrastructure," he added.

The center houses a powerful 8-way Compaq server Proliant 8500 based on Intel

Pentium III, Xeon processors with 8 GB memory and 70 GB HDD. The center also

includes Pentium III processor based nodes from Compaq. A deal has already been

finalized with Asian Paints and there are talks with other FMCG companies in the

country. The alliance will focus on developing industry-specific solutions.