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News in brief...

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CIOL Bureau
New Update

Rs. 100cr for Internet in North East



The IT minister Mr Pramod Mahajan has assured a sum of Rs 100 crore from the
budget of 2000-01 to develop computer community centres one each in 486 blocks

of North East. Speaking at the inauguration of IT Asia the minister said these

community computers centers will have an Internet connection. He also mentioned

that we are almost having two meetings a week to discuss the IT task force

report on hardware.

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While replying to the pathetic state of telecom as infrastructure in the

country Mr Mahajan assured that by mid-May there will not be any demand left as

far the telecom industry is concerned.

ISRO Scientist is the Fibre-Optic Person of the year



Dr. Venkateswaran, based in Bangalore, an ISRO scientist, has been chosen as the
Fibre Optic Person of the Year 1998. The award, instituted by leading

telecommunications and convergence magazine, Voice and Data, and Lucent

Technologies-Finolex Limited, optical fibre manufacturer, carries a cash prize

of Rs 50,000 and a citation.

The award is in recognition of Dr Venkateswaran's diverse contribution in the

field of optical fibre. He developed IFOG (Interferrometric fibre optic gyros).

It is a fibre optic sensors, which was deployed on GSAT-1 satellite. The IFOG (Interferrometric

fibre optic gyros) has number of advantages over conventional mechanical gyros

and they are cheaper also.

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Dr Venkateswaran was also successful in establishing capabilities in design,

fabrication, testing and delivery of end-to-end products such as long haul

communication link, short haul link, experimental coherent communication link,

which uses variety of fibre types.

He was chosen for the award by a selection committee comprising N. K. Sinha,

member (technology), DoT; V.P. Chandan, member (telecom), Ministry of Railways;

Prof. A.K. Ghatak, Department of Physics, IIT Delhi; Subroto Paul, managing

director and CEO, Lucent Technologies Finolex Ltd. and Ibrahim Ahmed, executive

editor, Voice and Data.

Compex to expand its operation in India



Compex Systems Pte. Ltd. will commission a feasibility study on the
possibilities of widening scope of its involvement in the Indian market. The

decision has been triggered by the fast changing telecom and IT scenario in the

country.

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According to the CEO of Compex Systems, Dr Chen Mun, even though the first

priority of the company is to strengthen its existing distribution partners, it

is also open to the idea of starting a subsidiary to market its products and

support its clients in India. Dr. Mun was in India to participate in the IT ASIA

fair in New Delhi.

There is also a possibility that the company may buy equities in Apcom

Computers and Tech Pacific (formerly Godrej Pacific)--Compex's two distribution

partners in the country. However, there was no proposal to increase the number

of distributors in India, he added. ``We will wait for the results of the study

before we take any final decision on the nature of our long-term commitment to

India," he said.

Compex, however, has not taken any decision on as to who would be conducting

the feasibility study on its behalf. Among other things, praising the pool of

engineering talent in India, Dr. Mun also hinted at the possibility of setting

up a software development base in the country. He said that though no exact date

has been decided for this, a decision would be taken after Compex gets the right

partner in India.

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The company hopes to do business worth three to four million US Dollars in

India this year. It feels that the privatization of the telecom sector and the

fast growth of Internet in the country would mean more business for Compex.

Neptune launches ERP for SME



Neptune Information Solutions Ltd. has launched a new ERP package for SME
segment. With 18 modules the new ERP package, called Trident, is priced at Rs 15

lakh.

Announcing this in IT ASIA Neptune President and CEO Rakesh Garg said that

Trident is developed after an effort of two years and is highly customized for

the SME segment. " Unlike other ERP packages Trident meets as much as 80%

of the requirement of the SME segment. It is Oracle approved and is scalable

upwards and power."

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Elaborating upon the features of the ERP package Mr Garg said that Trident

also incorporates in it CRM, which usually is not there in any such ERP

packages. It also has in it Business Capacity Model which only SAP has. "

We are also preparing e-commerce mask that would make Trident web enabled. A

GroupWare mask is also on its way to facilitate incorporate workflow and

GroupWare features into Trident."

In another six months time Neptune has plan to appoint new channel partners

one each in all major cities. At the end of the year we will have 75-100

partners in our Network. Neptune registered a revenue of Rs 5 crore during

1999-2000 as against Rs 2 crore during 1998-99.

Stewart Nelson CEO of Novell Inc.



Novell Inc. has announced the promotion of Stewart Nelson, senior vice president
of marketing and product development, to chief operating officer.

This announcement expands Mr Nelson's role at Novell, where he has held a

variety of executive-level positions in management, product development and

marketing since his arrival. "We've positioned Novell to be the leader in

network software for all networks - wired or wireless, intranet, extranet or

Internet," said Mr Nelson.

Mr Nelson has more than 15 years of experience in the computer industry.

Prior to joining Novell as part of the WordPerfect acquisition in 1994, he held

positions at WordPerfect and IBM.

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