Bombay-based Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) is planning to launch its banking software, Quartz, in the European market shortly. Developed with the client/server and object-oriented technology as the core of its systems architecture, Unix as the server, Windows as the interface and Oracle 7.0 as the RDBMS, Quartz is a fully integrated banking package, as claimed by the company. It has also an integrated risk management system which allows for real-time monitoring and analysis of position and exposures.

Quartz has been developed by TCS, along with its Swiss associate, TKS-Technosoft, and several Swiss banks at a total cost of pounds sterling 10 - 15 million, involving 300 - 400 man years.

Estimated to fetch revenues worth $100 million a year, Quartz is being targeted mainly at the British and the Swiss markets. In UK, TCS has already signed an exclusive agreement with Financial Objects plc. to market the product. Besides the distributorship, Financial Objects has also signed an exclusive contract with TCS for collaboration on future versions which will cater to UK’s banking needs.

TCS is also negotiating with major Swiss banks over its implementation. It has also set up a company in Switzerland, Quartz Software Technology Ltd., for distributing this product.

SMART, a software developed by Rave Computers of India, has been successfully installed at over 600 schools throughout the United Kingdom. It is designed for use by teachers for administration of student database, creation of study programmes, and production of reports, including parental reporting.

SMART is a Windows-based application and can be used on any PC having certain minimum configuration. It consists of three core elements - the National Curriculum and Programmes of Study, the Student Database and the Class or Tutor Group information.

According to the company’s Director, SMART is probably a unique case of an Indian company developing a software product for the international market offering a flexible approach to the handling of the curriculum and monitoring of student achievements. Using SMART, overall teaching plan or plans may be easily developed for a student group.

The software has been marketed in the UK through a London-based associate company, The Karnataka Group. The MD of Karnataka Group said that developed in India, SMART is a competitively priced international quality product. With the success of SMART, the company would be looking closely at more opportunities to market software products developed in India.

Bombay-based Boshu Technics Corporation, which is engaged in the development of client-server software products and projects, recently launched a state-of-the-art document imaging and archival software called Image Manager Pro.

Image Manager Pro has additional features which allow the user to e-mail, attach notes, mail and fax any scanned document. It has an Optical Character Recognition (OCR) function which helps to edit the image. One can also conduct full-text search or transfer data from the OCRed image document in the database of a relevant document.

Image Manager Pro is a software based on the Graphical User Interface (GUI) of Microsoft Windows. It can handle colour, black and white, grayscale and bitonal documents. It has the capability to manage paper documents and electronic documents such as word processing files, spreadsheets, simple ASCII text tiles, among others.

The package supports several image formats which include TIFF up to version 5.0, JPEG/JEIF, GIR, DIB, PCX, Windows BMP, TGA (TARGA), DCX, Ventura IMG Encapsulated Post Script Format (EPSF) and Windows metafile (WMF).

Image Manager Pro can also be used in a multi-user environment. Up to 15 users can concurrently log into the system. This can be achieved only if NETBIOS-compliant networks such as LAN manager, Lantastic, Novell-Netware, etc., are used. Through a network environment, the users can simultaneously share or view the same document. They can also share the same documents on the jukeboxes, at the same time.

Bombay-based Kale Consultants, a leading software developer, recently launched a software for proration of airline revenue called APEX (Automatic Proration Expert).

Proration can be defined as the distribution of passenger revenue between the booking carrier and the carrier which has uplifted the passenger. APEX prorates documents with high complexity and leaves less than five per cent for manual intervention. The software allows an airline to define Special Prorate Agreement (SPAs) in a highly parameterised module. These are stored in the system and can be maintained by the user. The ratio for passenger revenues to be shared by the two carriers is governed by IATA rules which are very complex. Even a minor error can lead to a huge amount of overbilling or underbilling in the case of partner airline. APEX makes the task of proration very easy.

APEX has been opted by Air India not only on the ground that it is less expensive than similar packages from other developers but also it is easy to maintain in-house. Before APEX was installed, the airline used to take more than three months to complete the process of sharing of revenues.

Kale Consultants entered the airline segment when it launched Praxis, a solution for passenger revenue accounting in 1993. Praxis is claimed to be the only solution in this category in the world to be developed on an open system platform.