News in brief

said. Acer officials declined to give details of the licensing agreement, which

will allow Acer's branded PDAs to run Palm's widely used operating system for

handheld computers. Acer's PDAs currently use Microsoft Corp's Windows CE

operating system. - Reuters Limited 2001.

NetByTel gets more funding



SAN FRANCISCO: Investors have provided $18.1 million assistance to help
privately held NetByTel Inc. expand, the developer of software that lets

telephone callers interact with Web sites by voice said on Wednesday. Lazard

Technology Partners, Accenture Technology Ventures and Deutsche Telekom venture

branch T-Ventures led the funding. The financing brings the total raised by Boca

Raton, Florida-based NetByTel to $25 million since its April 1999 launch. It

comes as firms seek to turn call centers into "contact centers" for

processing telephone calls and e-mail and integrating company information

technology systems to simplify, customize and speed sales. - Reuters.

agreement, Mphasis-Spectrum will translate the client's bank card-processing

platform from English (single byte character set) to Japanese (double byte

character set)," it said in a statement. The two firms will jointly

undertake software development for the project in Bangalore with Spectrum

providing project management support, it said. - Reuters.

<b class="subhead2>Rational opens office in Pune



BANGALORE: In a bid to increase presence in India, Rational Software has opened
a new office in Pune. Engaged in offering software-engineering tools, the

company's new office will cater to the market in the Maharashtra, except Mumbai,

Nasik, Goa and Madhya Pradesh. In a bid to increase in customer base Rational,

has appointed Zensoft, a wholly owned subsidiary of Seed Infotech, as a channel

partner to cover Pune market along with its existing channel partner for the

region, DSS Infotech. The Pune office will cater to the growing market in the

western regions of the country. Rational has also recently bagged orders in Pune

from companies like TCS, Wipro, Infosys, Veritas, Satyam, Persistent Systems,

Nihilent Technologies, Cognizant Technologies etc. - CIOL Bureau