News in brief...

InterCope brings ivoice to India



BANGALORE: The Bangalore-based InterCope India Pvt Ltd has launched its new application, allegedly the first of its kind in the world, called `ivoice'. ivoice is a free service to users who wish to send voice messages through the Internet to normal telephones and receive voice responses. Basically, users can log into an ivoice enabled web-site http://www.icope.com from anywhere in the world, record their message, specify the phone number and the voice message gets delivered in the original voice to a normal telephone. 

The receiver can optionally respond to the message on phone and this will be delivered back as a reply-again in the receiver's original voice. ivoice thus enables a regular voice based

dialogue. It also has special features like delivering the voice message at a date and time specified by the sender. Also, the sender gets a confirmation of the message delivery via e-mail along with a voice response of the recipient. ivoice allows the message to be protected by a security code that is shared only between the sender and the recipient, thus ensuring privacy. One can also send and receive messages whenever convenient, irrespective of recipient's immediate availability or difference in time zones.

It is targeted at lay users as well as businesses. While business users on travel can use ivoice from anywhere to send and receive voice messages, lay users can use it to keep in touch with families and friends. Speaking about the product, Deepak Nakra, Managing Director, InterCope said, "ivoice works with the help of two software, ivoiceweb and ivoicenode. ivoicenode, which will be connected to the Internet and telephone, receives the message through the net and transfers that to the specified telephone number. ivoicenode can support any number of telephone lines. While ivoiceweb is the Web interface and can be provided to any Web site." 

Rajiv Goswami takes over as CATS CEO



NEW DELHI: The General Manager of IBM India Rajiv Goswami has taken over as the CEO of CATS, a 51:49 joint venture between Computer Associates and The Chatterjee Group of Calcutta. Goswami takes over the mantle from Venkat Subbarao, who will now be the Managing Director, CA, for India and SAARC region. Goswami was also heading the Y2K competency center of IBM India.

CATS is CA's largest software development outside US. Started with an investment of $ 5 million in March 1998, CATS is headquartered in Calcutta. The focus of CATS is to act as a software solution provider, provide global professional service and technology consultancy to clients and partners around the world, and develop new business opportunities.

HP provides e-storage for Intira's e-business service platform



NEW DELHI: Hewlett-Packard and Intira Corporation, formally digital broadcast network (DBN) Corporation, the industry's premier provider of netsourcing, announced that Intira has selected the HP SureStore E enterprise storage solution for Intira's newest E-Class data center that will provide mission-critical infrastructure outsourcing and remote data storage via the Internet.

HP's "storage on demand" architecture adds to Intira's around-the-clock availability, nearly infinite scalability and ubiquitous accessibility that customers are demanding from service providers they entrust with the storage and management of business-critical applications and data. For its part, Intira has emerged as a leader in netsourcing--a term used to describe companies that outsource their IT and network services for mission-critical applications and contentt. 

Intira's unique E-Business Service Platform allows companies to offload their entire application and network infrastructures to Intira in order to focus more time, money and personnel on core business functions. The Intira E-Business Service Platform incorporates the most advanced technology for provisioning and managing network-based services, electronic vaulting and application hosting, and e-business utilities that ensure the smooth operation of applications running over the Internet--all monitored and controlled by the Intira Service Management Center as one seamless unit.

The selection of HP as Intira's primary storage supplier marks a significant step in the relationship between the two companies. The initial deployment of two HP SureStore E Disk Array XP256s will provide Intira with 5TB of storage capacity, data security and redundancy, superior access times, and HP's service and support. It also extends the companies' mutual efforts to assist each other in netsourcing business development and service provisioning.

Allied Telesyn appoints more distributors



NEW DELHI: In a bid to expand its reach in India, Allied Telesyn International, a leading vendor of networking products, has appointed three new distributors: Netplace Technologies in Mumbai, Interface Connectronics in Bangalore and OA Compserve in Delhi. Its existing distributors are Chipcom in Delhi and Allied Digital in Mumbai. According to Pradeep Joshi, Country Manager of Allied Telesyn, the company is targeting 10 percent of the Rs 200 crore Indian market by the end of this fiscal. It already has customers in the likes of NIIT, Canon India, HCL Technologies and Multiple Zones. Allied Telesyn products are ideally suited for a network set-up with 100-500 nodes.

Though the company had been operational in India for the past five years through Leading Edge, very little was heard of the company. By appointing new distributors, Allied Telesyn hopes to make itself more visible and become an active player in the Indian market. Since Allied Telesyn products are essentially meant for workgroup computing and not enterprise computing, they are cheaper. Joshi claims that worldwide, the market share of US-based Allied Telelsyn is next only to 3Com and believes that it should be able to replicate its performance in India soon. He is confident of going from a turnover of Rs 9 crore last fiscal to Rs 20 crore this fiscal. The company is also tying up with major system integrators. It already has a tie-up with IBM since 1998 and NIIT since November 1999. It is in the process of signing up with Compaq. 

ON Semiconductor achieves US$500 million from Asia Pacific 



NEW DELHI: The US chip maker ON Semiconductor, formerly a division of Motorola, has achieved US$500 million in regional revenue from the Asia Pacific Region during 1999, a double digit increase in sales and volumes of chips shipped on last year. One of the largest suppliers of analog, logic and discrete electronic components in the world, On Semiconductor employs more than 10,000 people in the region and runs manufacturing plants in Malaysia, the Philippines, China and Japan from its Asia Pacific headquarters in Hong Kong. 

The company supplies standard semiconductor components to the world's largest electronics

and technology firms with its key markets in the Asia Pacific including Korea, Taiwan, Japan and the PRC. "We've seen a clear upturn in orders in the past two financial quarters," said Henry Leung, ON Semiconductor's Vice President and General Manager for the Asia Pacific region. "Worldwide we expect Asia Pacific to be the fastest growing market over the next three years with much of the increase coming from the fast growing areas of computing and communications." 

According to Leung, the Asia Pacific represents about 50 per cent of the world's market for standard semiconductor components. "As most of the world's electronics production is done in Asia Pacific, we have a unique opportunity to increase our sales here, " he said.

ON Semiconductor, acquired by the Texas Pacific Group in April of this year for US$1.6 billion, focused on becoming the world's lowest cost producer of standard semiconductors," said Leung. "A clear strategy coupled with global joint ventures and a manufacturing restructuring process has positioned us to maximize our success in leading the world in supplying high volume power and interface components." According to VLSI Research, a US market research firm, the global semiconductor market in 1998 was valued at around US$125 billion, growing by around 18 percent annually over the past 20 years.