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Nokia Puts Cellphone Project on Hold Dismayed by an uncertain telecom scenario prevailing in India, Nokia
Telecommunications Pvt. Ltd., the wholly owned subsidiary of Finnish telecoms major Nokia,
has decided to put on hold its cellular phone manufacturing project in India. However, the
company is going ahead with plans to set up its first-ever software development centre,
either in Bangalore, Hyderabad or Gurgaon, near Delhi.
According to Hannu Karavirta, managing director, Nokia
Telecom, prevailing market conditions have forced the company to temporarily shelve the
cellular phone project. The software development centre will meet Nokia's global
requirements, mainly for the GSM test platform and the built-in GSM cellular phones.
"The company's decision to set up the centre in India was influenced by advantages
like easy availability of qualified software professionals and its volume
requirements," Karavirta informed Computers Today adding, "Nokia does not have a
software development centre anywhere in the world and the current proposed centre would be
its first foray into the software industry effectively."
Nokia has also decided to upgrade its GSM cellular testbed in
Delhi it had set up a few years ago. It will collaborate with the Indian Institute of
Science (IISc) on a research project, in addition to the existing two on GSM technology.
Mahindra-BT Lends A
Hand to Hughes
Mahindra-British Telecom Ltd. (MBT), a joint venture between
Mahindra and British Telecom, has signed an agreement with Alltel Information Services, a
partner in the Hughes Ispat Ltd. basic services joint venture, to customise its
Virtuoso-II software for the project. Alltel is engaged in a build-operate assignment with
Hughes Ispat for the latter's basic services network in Maharashtra. Virtuoso-II is
Alltel's flexible billing and customer care system for basic telecom and wireless
services.
For Hughes Ispat, Virtuoso-II is intended to help maintain a
competitive edge through its numerous rating and packaging options. Moreover, its design
will enable a single billing and customer care platform for the entire range of
telecommunication products offered by Hughes Ispat.
Recently, MBT set up a joint venture in Sri Lanka,
Mahindra-British Telecom Lanka Ltd., to set up a highly specialised software development
centre in the country. The new company would also develop software for local companies and
sell software packages sourced from India.
Infosys Makes A 'First'
With Cyber-banking
 With the setting
up of the first-ever concept centre with a model cyber bank at its facility in Bangalore,
Bangalore-based Infosys Technologies Ltd. is pioneering cyber-banking in India. Infosys is
partnering six IT majors, namely, Sun Microsystems, Oracle Corp., Applied Communications
Inc., Cisco Systems, Cincom, and Digital Equipment Corp., to popularise this new concept.
While Infosys will provide the necessary software, the other partners will provide
additional software, hardware and networking equipment.
According to N.R. Narayanamurthy, chairman and managing
director, Infosys, the company has already supplied its Bancs2000 package to 23 banks in
nine countries and signed a $5-million contract with Sampath Bank of Sri Lanka to replace
its existing mainframe-based banking application system. He said few Indian banks have
made headway in using IT and automation, these being confined to branch-level
computerisation. Only ICICI Bank has gone in for cyber banking in part. Citibank is
running a pilot project, "millennium banking" in Bangalore. It plans to reach
out to 10 percent of the city's population of 5.5 million. With 40 ATMs, it plans to
install debit card terminals in 3,000 shops and business establishments. At the Infosys'
cyber bank are an ATM, a cyber kiosk and a 'Java city' with single-window facility for
retail banking.
HCL Targets $ 9-b Swiss SW
Market
 The Indian IT major HCL Corp. Ltd. has set
up a subsidiary in Switzerland, HCL Technologies Schweiz AG, to provide a spectrum of
software services, with an immediate focus on the Year 2000 problem. The Swiss subsidiary,
based in Zurich, will enable HCL to target the country's $9-billion software services
market, which is 5 percent of the total European market, Shiv Nadar, chairman, HCL,
informed. With the Switzerland operations, the HCL Group has expanded its presence to 19
countries, thus accounting for 90 percent of the global market for infotech services.
According to Rajiv Mathur, managing director, HCL Europe, the
Swiss subsidiary will address issues like data migrations, tactical or strategic
application development and maintenance, and Year 2000-compliance across multiple
platforms. It will leverage HCL James Martin's TSRM or 'The Systems Redevelopment
Methodology', the joint venture's intellectual property for redevelopment, rehosting and
reengineering solutions.
Most recently, HCL's global agreement with Computer
Associates International Inc. (CA), has placed HCL as CA's first and only such partner.
HCL will provide software and training services and establish a dedicated Unicenter TNG
Centre of Excellence for specialised support services for CA clients. |
