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Our e-business enables us to create proprietary products


Rolta, an acknowledged leader in India’s GIS space, leveraged its expertise in CA’s Unicenter to create a state-of the-art data centre at its development centre in Mumbai. Santosh Desai, senior vice president eSecurity, Rolta India, outlines the division’s core strengths and its outlook for the future

Of late, Rolta has been foraying into areas other than the GIS space. Could you elaborate on your recent ventures?GIS is our core strength, which we have now combined with MIS. GIS and MIS are Rolta’s differentiating factors, along with e-business and networking. We have more than 70 percent of the GIS/Photogrammetry market in India.

e can now implement our mapping and GIS systems on a number of platforms, including Intergraph Framme, Smallworld, Autodesk Vision, etc. Our objective is to meet the requirements of corporates and the government sector. Some of our clients include NTPC, EIL, Central Water Commission (CWC) and the defence sector. Unlike other data centres in India that started directly with IDCs, we already have expertise in GIS and this enables us to understand an enterprise in totality.

Other than this, we have partnered with CA for offering network management solutions. Actually, e-security and network management have many similar characteristics, so we have combined the two to form a single division. We have also got into the smart card business. Internet and e-security are the new areas we have entered. This division has already contributed around Rs 8.9 crore in the last financial year. We expect it to contribute between 40-50 percent in revenues within 2-3 years time.

What are your offerings in the e-business space?
We set up the e-services division in 2001. Through this division we help customers streamline their existing business processes while at the same time integrating them with the Web. Our process helps the customer to realise a better RoI by increasing efficiency in transaction processing, getting products to market faster, reducing inventory and lowering carrying costs. We offer end-to-end e-business solutions and services, which includes hardware, software, networking, implementation, customisation, training and ongoing support. Our target verticals include banking, financial services, insurance, pharmaceuticals, government organisations, etc. The horizontals where we offer services include supply chain management (SCM), enterprise resource planning (ERP), customer relationship management (CRM) and even enterprise application integration (EAI). We have also developed several products in VPN, firewalls, intrusion detection, etc. This helps us when we are bidding for tenders. Customers are convinced about our abilities as we have proven it by developing a product.

What are the alliances Rolta has in place for its service offerings? 
We have partnered with some of the best names in the IT industry to provide customers with robust solutions. Our partners include global players like Intergraph for CAD and GIS, PTC for mechanical design automation and collaborative product commerce, Z/I Imaging for photogrammetry and imaging, IBM for e-business and e-commerce, Microsoft for MCIS, and Computer Associates for providing worldwide services on the Unicenter TNG platform. Our partnership with Oracle focuses on data warehousing and datamining. For e-security we also have a tie-up with NAI. We recommend a product only if we have the expertise. After we have informed the client about the benefits of implementing our partner’s product it is entirely up to the customer to implement it or not.

Our data centre is built on Microsoft’s Commercial Internet System (MCIS), a full-featured messaging system. We have over 45 lead auditors certified under the BS7799 certification, one of the most sought after security certification in the world. We are also certified information security providers (CISP), which enables us to provide everything from auditing to risk assessment to policy design.

Rolta’s ISP services haven’t taken off as expected. Are you still bullish on this front?
We were not looking at revenue when we set up our Internet data centre in 1999. We wanted to keep track of the latest technology in this field and also develop our own technology. This division has provided us with the opportunity to play around with the best Web technologies. Our data centre located in Mumbai is completely secure and offers full redundancy. But our aim was never to be a global ISP player, rather we wanted to gain expertise in Web technology. Hence, we offer our services only in Mumbai, Navi Mumbai and select adjacent suburbs.

This article first appeared in Express Computer.

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