Date:23/03/2006 URL: http://www.thehindubusinessline.com/2006/03/23/stories/2006032300720400.htm

Back iGate sets up ERP centre

Our Bureau

Hyderabad , March 22

Technology solutions provider iGate Global has announced the setting up of an ERP (enterprise resource planning) centre of excellence (CoE) at its software development centre in Hyderabad.

The company has invested about $1.5 million (about Rs 7 crore) in this centre and plans to add about 150 resources in the near term. The new centre seeks to consolidate its range of ERP offerings. While the licence revenues reflect a flat trend, the services are witness to about 30 per cent growth.

The Development Centre Head, Mr Raj Lanka, said "over the past 12 months, we have seen a considerable increase in the number of strategic clients we service from our Hyderabad centre. We are in the process of hiring a significant number of middle management talent to meet the centre's growth targets. From about 400 people, we expect to grow this centre to 750 within a year." The Vice-President, ERP, Mr Debasish Pattanayak, said the CoE has been instrumental in developing intellectual property (IP) solutions such as Portfolio Connect, which helps provide seamless integration between ERP systems and other legacy applications.

"Some of the iGate customers are using it effectively to eliminate complexities of system integration they encounter."

The ERP landscape is fast changing with a slew of mergers and acquisitions.

Given the consolidation happening, enterprises are faced with the challenge of adding new functionalities and improve their return on investment. It is here that a centre specially focussed on addressing this space would make a difference to customers, Mr Pattanayak said.

The Chief Delivery Officer of iGate, Mr Mohan Sekhar, said this would be like the other centres of excellence already created in the areas of J2EE, .Net and datawarehousing.