IDS SOFTWARES FORAYS INTO NIGERIA WITH VALUEPLUS SOFTWARE

IDS Softwares Pvt. Ltd. (IDS), global leader in providing integrated IT solutions for the hospitality industry, has reinforced its presence in Africa by entering the Nigerian Market. The company has partnered with ValuePlus Software, a leading IT enterprise, based in Abuja, Nigeria, engaged in banking software solutions, e-banking, ID card solutions, Payroll, POS, Inventory control systems and more. This is the fourth African nation where IDS hopes to repeat the success that it has enjoyed in Ghana, Egypt and Seychelles.

Commenting on the association, Mr Chukwuma Paul Chukwuka, Managing Director, Value Plus Africa, said, “The IDS – VALUEPLUS Partnership will provide the ultimate solution to the fast growing Hospitality Industry in Nigeria. Never in history has any software package been so proactively designed and customized to confront Industry dynamics. Value Plus and the stake holders in the Industry in Nigeria look forward to having the “Fortune Enterprise” with its unique pluses in features and functionality.”

Currently, North Africa is another important focus area for IDS and this association comes at a time when the company is already working on a French version of its Fortune Suite to be released soon.

Rajesh Yadav, General Manager, IDS, on association with Value Plus Software’s commented, “Finding a right partner is of high importance to IDS and associating with ValuePlus gives us immense confidence. The company has already made its reputation as a leading player in the region. They have a good support service system in place and we are taking this opportunity to introduce our products and penetrate the Nigerian market. IDS is known for its high level of quality in our products and services the world over and we aim to emulate our success in this country with the able support of Value Plus Software”

Value Plus Software’s vision is to inspire the development of ICT in West Africa. Central to this vision is their faith in World Class partnerships and international alliances. The company believes the future of people and businesses in Africa to a very large extent lies in information technology with a reasonable dose of ‘local content’.

ABOUT IDS SOFTWARES LTD

IDS Softwares Pvt Ltd is a global leader in integrated IT solutions for the Hospitality industry. The company, for over twenty years, has been designing, developing, marketing and maintaining a comprehensive range of information management systems enabling businesses of varied sizes, including hotels, restaurants, clubs and resorts. With Regional Sales and Support offices spread across the globe, the company has more than 1400 clients in over 20 countries.

IDS markets its hospitality software product under the umbrella brand ‘Fortune Suite of integrated solutions.’ The company addresses multiple aspects of the industry with its Property Management Systems, Restaurant Management Systems; Web based Products (Central Reservation Systems) and Business & Service Enhancement Products. The company’s Global R&D Center at Bangalore, India, offers support to its customers 24×7x365. IDS Softwares’ clients include Best Western, Club Mahindra Holidays, ETA Star group – Middle East, Fortune Park Group, Holiday Inn Hotels & Resorts, John Keells Holdings – Sri Lanka, Ramada Worldwide, Ramee Group of Hotels, Royal Orchid Hotels, Sarovar Group, The Ffort Radisson etc.

Wipro wins Intel Global Innovation Award

Wipro Infotech, the India and Middle East IT Business of Wipro Ltd and a leading provider of IT and business transformation services announced that it has won the prestigious Intel Global Innovation Award for Storage at the Intel Developer Forum 2008 in San Francisco.

Businesses today are encountering rapid increase of digital data. Growth in existing applications like messaging, databases and emerging rich-media applications make it imperative for businesses to enhance their computing and storage needs. Adding to that are new regulatory requirements and business continuity plans which are leading organizations to have a comprehensive and scalable storage system.

Wipro identified a distinct gap in today’s storage needs and solutions offered in the market. Driven by internal R&D focus, Wipro has invested more than 1500 person hours in developing this unique storage-server solution that addresses this need. Wipro has made substantial investments in financing and staffing the project.

Wipro drives innovation as a fundamental business enabler. Wipro has global partnerships with clients and technology partners to drive innovation across different business and technology bottleneck areas. NetPower Storage-Server is one of the most recent successful outcomes of the Applied Innovation framework. Wipro has invested exclusively in a state of art Product Engineering and development cell – The Eminence Lab at its Pondicherry facility. This platform from Intel was developed, integrated, tested and certified on leading industry storage practices for supporting file share protocol services over IP at Wipro Eminence Lab.

NetPower Storage Server is a secure, reliable and flexible computing and storage-server platform/solution which integrates with industry standard storage management software to deliver a flexible all-in-one unified DAS/ NAS/ SAN storage solution. It is cluster ready for High Performance Computing users and is scalable to several Petabytes.

Supporting up to 12 enterprise-class SAS or high-capacity SATA hard drives, the Wipro NetPower Storage-Server is a high performance, flexible platform enabling enterprise–class computing and storage for small and medium businesses. Ideally positioned for mid-market customers looking for a server and entry/mid range storage solution, the Wipro NetPower Storage Server is a dual purpose server within a single box (compute and storage in one box) and is ideally priced as well for large enterprises.

The product starts delivering a storage capacity of 12 terabytes on an enterprise class SATA drive populated and up to 6 terabytes on SAS platform. It can scale up to several petabytes especially when implemented in a large cluster making this solution ideal for fast growing organizations seeking high performance file servers and secure network attached storage appliance.

The Wipro NetPower Storage-Server is also an eco-friendly product which is 100% RoHS compliant (Restriction of Hazardous Substances) and is an outcome of Wipro’s global initiative towards ecological sustainability.

Speaking on the occasion, Mr. Ashok Tripathy, Head – Wipro Personal Computing Division said “Innovation is a key business driver for us. We use Wipro’s Applied Innovation framework to create new innovative solutions that focus on resolving our customers’ business challenges. Our Supernova super-computing offering was another such milestone. We are happy that Wipro’s all-in-one server-storage solution has been recognized by Intel and awarded the first position in innovative storage solutions worldwide. We are confident that this solution will address our clients’ need for a scalable and flexible storage and computing platform.”

“We congratulate Wipro on winning the Intel Server & Storage Innovation award at the Intel Developer Forum in August 2008. It is heartening to see Wipro use the power of the latest Intel technologies to provide innovative solutions to their customers”, said Mr. R. Ravichandran, Director South Asia Sales, Intel.

Created by Intel this award recognizes unique innovation leaders on a global basis for Intel Architecture based server and storage platforms. It also recognizes distinctive innovation on Storage/Server platforms across all OEMs and ODMs at a global level. Winners are chosen based on distinctive solutions and measurable business results for challenges faced by end customers.

About Wipro Infotech

Wipro Infotech, a division of the US$4.93 billion Wipro Limited, provides enterprise customers with high value Information Technology Products, Software Services, Solutions and Consulting Services in India and the Middle East. Headquartered at Bangalore, Wipro Infotech serves customers in India through a network of 22 offices and 170 service locations across the country. It also has regional offices across the Middle East serving the region.

IDENIZEN TIES UP WITH CORPORATION BANK

IDenizen Smartware Pvt. Ltd., with its leading education ERP product suite, SmartCampus™, today announced a first-of-its-kind strategic tie-up and co-branding with Corporation Bank. This pioneering partnership brings the power of modern banking and VISA debit cards to students’ financial transactions and to their stakeholders – from management and faculty, to parents.

A key feature of this partnership is that it makes SmartCampus™ card the first ever VISA-branded RFID campus card. This would enable cardholders to carry out their students’ financial transactions from across the country with ease, through Corporation Bank’s 1000+ Branches & ATMs and over the Internet. Being a Visa card, SmartCampus™ cardholders can also access 25000+ other ATMs and 12 lakh+ merchants across India.

SmartCampus™ is a comprehensive product that automates and increases productivity in most campus activities – from admission to fees, library automation to examinations. Over 60000 students already use the SmartCampus™ card to carry out financial transactions related to the above activities, and the IDenizen-Corporation Bank partnership envisages a large number of these students benefiting from the introduction of this new facility.

Commenting on the landmark association with Corporation Bank, Girish Baliga, Founder, MD & CEO, IDenizen, said, ” This is a first-ever tie-up between a educational ERP solution and a bank that will bring the power of modern banking to students’ financial processes. With this, we envisage completely cashless transactions within the campus, easing the lives of both parents and students. An added benefit is that they can use these cards outside campuses that brings a host of value-added facilities”.

Mr. B R Bhat, GM, Corporation Bank, added, “It is great to be associated with SmartCampus™, which is helpful for the students in many ways. Students now have an option to have a savings bank account with us and integrate it with their SmartCampus™ card making their life at the campus more easy and comfortable. Students and their parents will now find it more convenient to have a SmartCampus™ Card with debit card facility than have a stand- alone student account.”

The SmartCampus™ Card with the debit card facility has been successfully tested out in a number of professional colleges in the States of Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh & Gujarat. IDenizen and Corporation Bank are targeting having more than a million student users in the next three years through this partnership.

ABOUT IDENIZEN AND SMARTCAMPUS™

Idenizen Smartware Pvt ltd is a four-year technology solutions provider for the education vertical that has specialized in creating and marketing a smart card-enabled software solution for the education vertical. The SmartCampus™ product is ideally suited for educational institutions and campus management. The product offers an increasingly relevant value proposition to all key stakeholders in the educational institutions and has a seamless, attractive, integrated business model that makes for ease of adoption. Today it is a leader in the sector with nearly 150 installations that directly benefits tens of thousands of students, teaching and non-teaching staff, the management of the institutes and the students’ parents.

Earlier this year, IDenizen received funding of $2.25M from NEA-IndoUS Ventures. The company is utilizing the funds to further its presence in the national market while at the same time enhancing its current suite of products and working on newer innovations, all directed at the educational vertical.

SmartCampus™ has been introduced in a number of colleges with visible improvements in productivity and efficiency of operations. Rich domain understanding and working closely with customers over the years has resulted in the product addressing tedious, error-prone academic activities through seamless automation. The functional areas automated by SmartCampus™ include department administration, staff profile, staff and student attendance, staff payroll, examinations, library management, accounting, student information systems, hostel management etc.

ABOUT CORPORATION BANK

Corporation Bank, a premier public sector bank is in the forefront of providing innovative and tech savvy products and services to its customers. It is the first Public Sector Bank to bring its entire banking operations under Core Banking Solutions [CBS]. Corporation Bank has leveraged technology to provide many ‘firsts’ to its customers like online educational loan for
professional courses, SMS-based Pay-by-Mobile services etc.

It offers many innovative products & services such as International Debit Card, International Credit Card, Internet Banking, SMS Banking, Kiosk Banking, various utility payment facilities etc. The Bank has a large network of over 2000 service outlets in the country. Through CorpBank ATMs apart from withdrawing cash the card holder can avail many other services like transfer funds, recharge of prepaid mobiles, LIC premium payment etc.

It is also the first public sector Bank to offer the Educational Loan Online [CorpVidya]. The Bank has endeavored to launch this unique online facility for the convenience of students who have secured admission to professional courses. This facility will relieve the beneficiary students from spending time and travel with uncertainty in search of funds for their dream project of acquiring a professional qualification. Corporation Bank has been emphasizing that – ‘no deserving student be denied higher education for want of finance in time’. This online request facility with in-principle sanction ensures a hassle-free and timely credit dispensation to the needy students.

In addition to education loan, the Bank also offers value-added products to the students like – CorpByte, to enable students to acquire accessories such as PCs, Laptops, Notebooks etc., essential for furthering their higher studies.

The Bank offers a Savings Bank Account specially designed for the students – Corp New Gen. The student can open an account without any initial deposit and with only a quarterly average balance of Rs. 100 and can enjoy full Bank services. They can enjoy add-on benefits like the Bank’s Debit card, SMS Banking, Internet Banking, Mobile recharge, Railway Ticket booking etc.