Siemens Information Systems Ltd., (SISL), Bangalore, has introduced recently in India a new billing and customer care software for telecom service providers.

Called : GSM Administration and Billing systems (GABS), the system has several major features including payment collection, bill processing and printing, customer enquiry, complaint management and system administration, among others. GABS is a client server architecture-based system with Windows NT as the server. The customer database resides in ‘Oracle Workgroup 2000’ database management system.

Targeting the incumbent telephone service providers, the Department of Telecommunications (DoT) and the Mahanagar Telephone Nigam Limited (MTNL), besides the newer basic service operators, Siemens bas also introduced a telephone directory assistance system : Infovision, a client-server solution, which provides the user with information on phone, fax, page and cellular numbers of subscribers.

Micros Fidelio India, a 50:50 joint venture between the Indian Hotels Company Ltd., Mumbai, and Micros Fidelio Software GmbH of Germany, has come out with an in-house paging system based on client-server technology. The software application has been developed on Windows NT using object-oriented techniques. It uses TCP/IP protocol for communicating between client and the server.

The new paging system aims at making more effective use of the ‘Engineering Management System (EMS)’ developed at the Fidelio Software Technology Park in India for the hospitality segment. In a hotel environment, EMS simulates a complaint register which runs on Fidelio workstations in different departments of the hotel. The paging equipment for the system is being provided by Arya Communications, the authorized distributors for Motorola paging encoders, who has come out with a similar system for in-house paging, but on the DOS platform.

Computer-based training (CBT) products using multimedia technologies which have been developed by an Indian company - NIIT Ltd., New Delhi - are helping the World Bank and top American corporations to slash their soaring training costs. NIIT’s US subsidiary, NIIT (USA), incorporated in Atlanta, has been hired by these organizations to develop CBT products to upgrade the skills of their employees. NIIT entered the US in 1991 as a non-operational office and incorporated its US office three years later.

The latest to utilize the technology skills of NIIT is Microsoft. NIIT is developing CBT products for the software which Microsoft is currently developing. According to NIIT, as soon as any Microsoft’s product hits the market, the CBT module with NIIT’s own brand name would also be released.

NIIT is probably the world’s largest producer of CBT products with more than 200 titles. It has the world’s largest CBT factories in New Delhi and Calcutta, where 500 software engineers work on developing new products. The company expects a 400% annual growth rate in the CBT segment and hopes to achieve a turn-over of $100 millions from its CBT products in the next few years.

New Delhi-based Binary Semantics Ltd., has developed its own enterprise resource planning package : ‘Radical’, and is now installing reference sites at 6 to 7 locations. The ERP product has modules for human resource management and financial and market intelligence, with Indian statutory laws like ‘Modvat’, excise and sales tax incorporated in them. The solution will run on DB2 on AS/400, as well as on Oracle. Standalone applications developed by the company can also be integrated with Radical.

The enhanced version 2.0 has been priced at Rs. 2.5 million ($ 62,500) to Rs. 10 million ( $ 250,000) and is targeted mainly at the medium-sized manufacturing companies in India.

Bangalore-based Infosys Technologies has recently launched BankAway - the remote banking super-platform at a retail financial services conference: the ‘Banks Administration Institute’s (BAI) Retail Delivery 1997’, held recently at New Orleans, US. Infosys is targeting at mid-range banks in the US and the Middle East.

BankAway is designed to work on multiple platforms like Microsoft Windows NT, SQL Server, SUN Solaris-Oracle and to interface with standards like Open Financial Exchange (OFX) and Gold, besides other banking functions like retail banking, bill payment, small business banking and corporate infrastructure. Salient features of the product include use of Java applets, security and an elaborate on-line transaction processing (OLTP) infrastructure. BankAway allows bank branding, customization, scalability and the time-to-market advantage.

According to the company, one advantage of this package is that the software need not be installed at the end user level in contrast to the other packages like Microsoft’s Money Package. It can also be integrated with any platform and interfaces easily with a variety of back-end banking systems, databases and networks.

New Delhi-based public sector infotech company, CMC Ltd., has introduced in the Indian market a vehicle tracking system (VTS) : Nirdeshak, which is based on the Differential Global Positioning System (DGPS), involving tracking through a constellation of 24 satellites orbiting the earth at an altitude of 20,200 kms. Company officials claim that the VTS integrates computers, radio networks and satellites together to locate the position of vehicles with an accuracy level of 2 to 5 meters.

Nirdeshak is claimed to combine the latest technology in vehicle tracking systems with applications for virtually any industry where vehicle movement is involved. According to the company officials, the system provides precision in tracking vehicle positions and controlling the movements from a central station. It is meant for applications ranging from police control room operations, emergency services, train control, transport fleet management and ships monitoring to mining operations.

Resonance Technologies, Hyderabad, has announced that it is developing two packaged applications : a patient management system called: Clinic Monitor, for practicing physicians and clinics, and time management application, called : TimeCard-Java, for the services industry. The Clinic Monitor would be initially aimed at the Indian healthcare market and TimeCard-Java would be marketed in the US.

Resonance Technologies is a new company set up recently by US-based promoters, both for software development and also to conduct computer training programmes in India.

Pune-based SoftTech Engineers has announced the availability of a Windows-based software package for professionals engaged in the construction business, such as builders and contractors, architects, engineers and project consultants.

Called : Construction Manager, the software is designed to create private, proprietorship or public limited companies with any number of sites, and also prepare a master database of materials, suppliers, workmen etc. The software has also the ability to prepare transaction and other reports for cash and cheque payments and receipts, bank and cash books, and total payments and receipts.

Dharma Computers, a 100% subsidiary of its US-based parent company, Dharma Systems, has developed an Indian Language Application Development Kit (ILADK). Claiming to be the first of its kind in the country, ILADK technology is a software development kit that can be plugged into Windows95/Windows NT, while users have the option to use Indian languages for applications like word processing, spreadsheets and database application among others.

The technology enables users to use the Indian languages for their database applications. Data can be entered, stored and retrieved in the local languages.

Silicon Graphics Inc., has developed a package for banking and finance applications in India. The software has a data mining capability with 3-D modeling. It can also track price variations and detect patterns to identify new opportunities for enhancing stock value.

The company claims that the visual intensive software can enable quick assimilation of complex data.

Recently, India became the first country to offer ‘remote access mode’ computer based training (CBT) facility for the training of airlines cockpit crew. The training would be provided at the Hyderabad-based Central Training establishment of Indian Airlines (IA). IA sources said that this facility is at present available only in three institutions in Europe and US.

Indian Airlines would be introducing for the first time indigenously developed high-end software technology products for training civil aviation personnel with technical collaboration of an Indian company - Sankhya Infotech, a world leader in development of advanced computer-based training products for the aviation industry.

SystemLogic India, the Bangalore-based software company, providing client server, Internet/Intranet, groupware and data warehousing solutions, has launched Qflow, a product that enables a completely paperless approach to designing, documenting and implementing a quality management system across the enterprise.

The Centre for Development for Advanced Computing (C-DAC), Pune, which is engaged in designing supercomputers, recently unveiled India’s biggest achievement so far in hardware manufacturing - the Param 100 gigaflops supercomputer. Billed as one of the most powerful number-crunching machines in the world, the Param-100 model is said to be on par with the high-end machines of global hardware giants like Cray, IBM and Fujitsu. The machine will be offered to the Indian Meteorological Department as a replacement for its 10-year-old Cray supercomputer, which was purchased from the United States under stiff end-user conditions. Silicon Graphics, which nowowns Cray, is said to be in the race to replace the Department’s machine.

Sources said the latest Param machine is based on an ‘open frame parallel architecture’ and will be optimized to run most high-end scientific applications. Apart from weather forecasting, it can also be used for industrial design, satellite data interpretation, complex imaging and defence purposes. The new machine could be upgraded to 1,000 gigaflops, if needed. C-DAC has some 30 installations of its 2-gigaflops machines so far, mostly in Indian public sector scientific institutions.