Sun Microsystems’ iForce Developer Lab for Indian ISVs
Sun Microsystems has announced the launch of the iForce Developer lab for helping Indian ISVs to work on open standards-based technologies. Oracle India, a subsidiary of Oracle Corporation, the world’s largest enterprise software company, would be the technology partner and would provide key development tools and software for the lab. The ISV lab will be hosted at Sun Microsystems facility at Bangalore.

The Sun-Oracle effort is a lab-based alliance and programme dedicated to giving Indian ISVs the assistance to test and fine tune their applications on Sun platforms for critical parameters like performance, scalability and reliability before deployment in the markets. Local ISVs from all industry verticals will be invited to participate in the lab based on their applications developed for open standards and a scalable, secure environment.

Sierra Atlantic announces application management services Centre of Excellence
Sierra Atlantic, the application networks company, has consolidated its Application Management Services (AMS) under a new AMS Centre of Excellence, a unit that focuses on providing ongoing maintenance, upgrades, enhancement and support of customers’ application packages porfolio, including Oracle e-business suite, PeopleSoft CRM, Siebel e-business, Agile Product Collaboration, and SAP R/3.

iGate sets aside $50 million for BPO foray, expansion
US-based iGate Corporation is planning to invest a total of $50 million in India in the next 12-18 months. Of this, up to $40 million will be pumped into its BPO foray while $10 million has been set aside for expansion of the development team. The company is planning to take both these initiatives through its subsidiary, Mascot Systems, where 88 percent of the equity is held by iGate while the rest is held by the public.

“We are looking at investing up to $40 million in the BPO space in the next 12 to 18 months and are also considering acquisition of companies in this space in India,” iGate Corporation’s executive officer and co-founder Sunil Wadhwani said.

i2 to pump $10 mn into India in 2003
i2 Technologies, a global provider of value chain management solutions plans on investing approximately $10 million in its operations in India in 2003. The company’s development centre in India contributes 60 percent of i2 Technologies’ global development activity and the company expects this to rise to 70 percent in the future.

i2 Technologies India’s country head for supplier relationship management (SRM) and transaction platform group, Sankalp Saxena, said that the company has invested $25 milion in its operations in India, till date. This has been deployed in the development centre, on equipment and on infrastructure. The company has also moved $10 million worth of hardware to the development centre in Bangalore, thereby doubling the capacity of the centre.

Concerto earmarks $5 mn for India expansion plans
Nasdaq-listed Concerto Software has earmarked an investment of $5 million in order to increase its market presence in India as well as to fuel its product support activities out of India.

“We are highly committed to the Indian market and we have planned similar investments for the coming year as well,” Concerto Software’s Asia Pacific vice president Pramod Ratwani said. Concerto is also keen on shifting its global development work to India. At present, the company has three development facilities in the US.

GrapeCity to introduce Jclass ServerReport
GrapeCity India, through a strategic tie-up with Sitraka of Canada, has introduced Sitraka’s Jclass ServerReport in the Indian market.

Jclass ServerReport is a Java class library that uses J2EE servlet and JSP technology to generate printable documents in the PDF format. It generates documents on J2EE application server and along with Jclass ServerChart, is part of Sitraka’s Jclass Server Views development suite for J2EE.