Giving a new thrust to Novell's 14 years of commitment to India, the company opened its largest engineering facility outside the U.S. recently in Bangalore. The new India Development Center (IDC) at Bagmane Tech Park delivers interoperable Linux platform and integrated IT management software. The company will invest about $100 million in the country in the next three years.
The new facility with a capacity to house 700 employees will support the company's global engineering initiatives with responsibilities for several products and technologies, including SUSE Linux enterprises, ZENworks, identity and access management solutions, and Novell's Open Enterprise Server. Though the company has key technical talent in the U.S., Canada, Germany, Mexico, and the Czech Republic, the IDC represents Novell's largest concentration of technical talent outside the U.S.
The Norwegian company Tandberg, a provider of tele-presence, high definition videoconferencing, and mobile video solutions is betting on Indian market. As a part of the move, Tandberg has kicked off its first R&D center in India.
The new facility in Bangalore will create new intellectual properties for Tandberg’s next generation video communication solutions. The facility, currently with 11 employees, can accommodate 80 engineers.
Tandberg has a headcount of 1300 worldwide, with dual headquarters in New York and Norway. The company, which claims to be having a sizable share in the $1.2 billion video conferencing market globally, is scouting for local partners in India and South East Asia in the areas of mechanical designing and contract manufacturing.
Intersil, a NASDAQ-listed designer and manufacturer of analog semiconductors is charged to expand its presence with its new design center in Hyderabad. With the addition of the new facility of Intersil Analog Services, located at the HiTech City, the company further carries on with its expansion in the Asia-Pacific region.
"This facility will help in attracting top design talent into our organization," said Carlos Laber, Vice President, Worldwide Technology, Intersil. In the last two years, the company that has filed about six patents is working on areas such as power management for chips, and next generation products such as multi-cell battery chargers for hybrid vehicles. The company has generated revenues of $15 million in India this year and expects to ramp up to $55 million by 2011.
MindTree Consulting, a global IT and R&D Services Company has changed its name to MindTree Limited. Over the years, MindTree has emerged as one of the fastest growing IT and R&D Services provider, offering its services across a range of technology and industry domains.
"The word 'consulting' in our name did not reflect the entire range of services we offer our customers. While MindTree is one of the first companies to offer consulting-led IT services, we are Intellectual Property-led in our R&D Services," said Ashok Soota, MindTree Chairman and Managing Director. The company that started in 1999 is co-headquartered in the U.S. and India.
The change in the name of the company is in line with its strategy towards the next phase of growth called MindTree 2.0.
Now stolen laptops can be tracked! The Mumbai based Micro Technologies has launched India's first laptop tracking system to locate stolen laptops.
The company’s software, named Micro Lost Notebook Tracking System (LNTS), is embedded on notebook hard drives and is tracked as soon as it is connected to the Internet. P. Sekhar, Micro Technologies Chairperson points out that 97 percent of expensive laptops that are stolen are never recovered and 57 percent corporate crimes are linked tothese thefts.
The LNTS software that uses the Windows Explorer platform is available online, with prices starting from Rs.600. When downloaded, the software automatically installs itself and remains hidden in the laptop and connects to an embedded monitoring system the moment the laptop logs on to the Internet. The LNTS saves all data connected to the user’s online activities, which can only be accessed by the company's technician.
The U.S. data communications products manufacturer Patton Electronics has started its Indian subsidiary operations from Chennai.
"In India we want to serve the middle market by providing data communication solutions for enterprise use. Patton has a strong foothold in VoIP solutions and we see a great need for these solutions in the Indian market," said Andreas Danuser, Director, Patton India.
With its India operations, the company hopes to expand its presence in the Asia Pacific region. Initially, the India subsidiary houses the marketing and the technical support operations and the company also plans to set up an R&D center and a manufacturing unit to it.
Privately held, the company is headquartered in Gaithersburg, Maryland. The company was established in 1984 and has over 1000 products, 500 customers, and 200 distributors in its portfolio.
The company known till now as i-flex solutions is to change its name to Oracle Financial Services Limited. The Board of Directors of i-flex solutions has approved the proposal, subject to regulatory and shareholder approvals. The proposed new name reflects the company's close strategic and operational alignments with its parent company Oracle, an enterprise software provider that owns 81 percent of the company. The new branding strategy demonstrates the synergy of scale, resources, expertise and efficiency across the two organizations.
The current management team under N.R.K. Raman, CEO and Managing Director, will continue to run the operations of the company.
Imageworks India, the Indian arm of Sony Pictures Imagework, has opened its new facility in Chennai. The Chennai facility will work with the Culver City facility in executing the visual effects of seven Hollywood films now under production.
Imageworks has done the visual effects for Spiderman, Monster House, Stuart Little, The Chronicles of Narnia, and several other academy award winning films. With the films like Ghost Rider, Beowulf, and I Am Legend in its latest list, the company is presently working on a film called Hancock.
The facility with its current 90 employees would be scaled up to 180. Founded in 1992, Imageworks - a component of the U.S.-based Sony Pictures Digital Production - acquired 50.1 percent stake in FrameFlow (India) Private Ltd. last year at a cost of $5 million. Globally, Sony Imageworks is doing business worth nearly $7 billion and has captured 37 percent of the box office for visual works globally.