From 'gee whizz' to 'get serious'

AFTER CURIOSITY comes commitment. `India Internet World' shows held annually in the nation's capital, were popular events with school kids. But this year's gathering was a unadulterated business to business expo for the Internet Age.

A handful of global heavyweights were on hand:

Computer Associates (CA), New York-based company hitherto known by its network, security and information handling products, has expanded to offer a new tool - `Brightstor' - for storage management. BrightStor is a suite of hardware and software solutions to ensure ``hot'' backup and recovery of critical business data.

IBM used the IIW forum to seemingly flaunt its new mantra: ``We Love Linux!''. Its integrated ``iSeries'' business server now comes in a Linux flavour and allows users to swap between partitions on the same server that run both Linux and IBM's OS/400 environment. The Netfinity server, too is available with a penguin running the show. Other traditional IBM softwares also came in Linux versions, as did the all-in-one, IBM `Small Business Suite'.

Verisign, a leader in domain name, digital certification and payment services niche was on hand - in the avatar of its Indian arm, ``SafeScrypt''. The company is poised to enter the digital signature authentification business.

Meanwhile Verisign's 2000 acquisition of Network Solutions makes it the largest provider in the world of ``trust services'' - which includes .com,.net and .org names. Safescrypt used the IIW space to showcase public key infrastructure (PKI) services, centered around the processing centre it has set up in Chennai.

Along with the gaints a few Davids were also there.

Juniper, the maverick Internet Protocol (IP) infrastructure provider displayed the hardware that went into the Internet backbone.

Interestingly a Bangalore-and-Singapore based Indian enterprise, was also carving a niche for itself as a marketeer of total internet solutions, by tying up with half a dozen hardware and software players. Micro Village Communications Pvt Ltd, was thus able to provide a cost effective turnkey solution to Internet Service Providers like VSNL and Satyam, based on its portfolio: Robotics modems, IP gateways from CommWorks, Sitara Quality of Service (QoS) systems etc.

A delegation of South Korean companies showcased some mouthwatering consumer devices - audio cassette-cum-mp3 players, TV set-top Internet and broadband access boxes, ultralight hand held computers and the like.

A regular at the IIW fair, the Israeli satellite-provider, Gilat, was in partnership this year with Bharti Broadband Networks, to offer India's first `always on' broadband Internet service via satellite.

Expected to be a crucial technology for the rural hinterland where landline telephony was scant or absent, the Bharti-Gilat solution used a small ``SkyBlaster'' outdoor dish antenna and a PC based server which enabled round the clock Internet access as well as the possibility of making educational video broadcasts.

The well known IT trainer, Aptech, was present - but in another role: to promote its e-business enabler, ``BconnectB''.

Aimed at easing the labour pains of going from a brick to a click operation, the company offered a number of scalable solutions which would allow traditional companies to exploit Internet to network with suppliers and clients while providing them unique ( if secure) access to your own information data base.

An Ahmedabad-based company was offering a glimpse of the next step - ``Avtar'' was the software solution offered by ``Net4Nuts'', to ISPs, cellular providers and web hosts - enabling them to create the world's first ``Universal Resource Management'' tool for their customers.

Mr Chirag Patel, the founder-``nut'', sees this as the new convergence, where your communication provider will enable you to receive and answer mails from multiple accounts, receive prompts from news services, travel, weather and financial portfolio services; schedule appointments, buy tickets and touch base with colleagues - all 'on the hoof' and on a variety of platforms.

It was the vision of a brave, new, seamless world of information on tap to anyone with a PC or a mobile phone. And in a way it was what India Internet World was all about.

Anand Parthasarthy

Send this article to Friends by E-Mail

Section  : Science & Tech
Previous : Conversation maps