PREVIOUS ISSUES

North

 Progressive Infotech

Vineet Kumar, Director, Enterprise Sales, Progressive Infotech, receiving the award

Undeterred by the economic slowdown, Delhi-based Progressive Infotech recorded a turnover of Rs 211 crore in FY2009-10, clocking a 16 percent growth compared to its topline of Rs 182 crore in FY2008-09. Managing Director Prateek Garg attributed his company’s good showing to its focus on the government vertical, growth in its communication and infrastructure software business, and geographical expansion which saw its services business grow.

“We have made strong inroads into the government sector over the last few years, so even though corporate spending on IT dipped sharply last year, we were not hurt much. Apart from this, our focus on the communication business helped to add some revenue, while infrastructure software grew across the portfolio. We also saw healthy revenue from services as we expanded into the Middle East and North Africa in FY2009-10,” said Garg.

Performance Highlights

• Deployed Microsoft Exchange, DR and e-mail archiving solution for 4,500 employees of a PSU • Undertook a project that involved networking the supreme court with high courts and district courts across the country. This included the deployment of more than 21,000 PCs • Rolled out 9,000 desktop and 3,500 thin clients across 5,000 branches of a PSU bank

Company Snapshot

Company: Progressive Infotech MD: Prateek Garg Year of inception: 1998 Turnover 2009-10: Rs 211 crore Turnover 2008-09: Rs 182 crore No of branches: 13 Certified employees: 703 Employees: 1050  Principals: HP, Microsoft, Symantec, Juniper Networks, Epson

About 40 percent of the company’s revenue in FY2009-10 came from the government vertical, while 30 percent was contributed by the BFSI segment. Garg said that although profitability was affected because vendors cut margins, the services business from overseas markets helped Progressive to shore up its profitability to some extent.

Among the key projects the company executed in FY2009-10 was the deployment of a Microsoft Exchange, DR and e-mail archiving solution for a large PSU. The solution deployed spanned across 4,500 employees of the PSU. It also undertook a project for NIC, which involved networking the supreme court with several high courts and district courts across the country. This project included the deployment of more than 1,000 servers and 21,000 PCs, besides network equipment.

Another significant project handled by the company during the year was the rollout of 9,000 desktops, 3,500 thin clients and over 300 units of peripherals across 5,000 branches of a large PSU bank.

During FY2009-10, Progressive deployed Microsoft Dynamics CRM and Microsoft SharePoint server at its premises to improve its business processes and agility. It also certified itself on various levels of ISO to maintain the quality of its systems and solutions.

In FY2010-11 the company has a number of initiatives lined up. It will focus on network convergence apart from data center transformation. Among verticals, the company plans to increase its focus on public services and health care. Progressive also plans to grow the operations of its Singapore subsidiary and expand into select European markets.

East

 Embee Software

Sushil Trivedi, Regional Manager, Embee Software, receiving the trophy

Kolkata-based Embee Software clocked revenues of Rs 158 crore in FY2009-10, growing by a stable 11 percent over the previous year’s topline of Rs 142 crore. About 50 percent of revenues came from corporate reselling, with the rest being contributed by systems integration and solutions business.

Explaining the growth factors, Sudhir Kothari, Managing Director, Embee Software said, “We grew on the back of an increased focus on solutions selling, deep selling to existing accounts, and mapping opportunities better. We consolidated our operations in different geographies and acquired new accounts across every region. The investments we made in SAP B1 deployment capabilities have also helped us bag several small and big projects across many verticals.”

Performance Highlights

• Focused on deep selling to existing accounts and increased revenues through solution selling • Executed two infrastructure consolidation and virtualization projects for Tata group companies worth a total of Rs 7 crore • Implemented Rs 2.9 crore-worth project at Bhilai Steel • Implemented document and travel management system, internally

Company Snapshot

Company: Embee Software MD: Sudhir Kothari Year of inception: 1988 Turnover 2009-10: Rs 158 crore Turnover 2008-09: Rs 142 crore Employees: 225 Certified employees: 32 Principals: HP, Microsoft, Cisco, D-Link, Epson

The other factor for the company’s decent showing, according to Kothari, was its focus on retaining employees and managing their growth. “We have always provided employees a viable growth path and provided them the independence to work as an entrepreneur inside the organization, and they have delivered when it always mattered,” he added.

Two of the largest projects Embee executed in the last fiscal were for Tata group companies.

“Both projects required us to provide end-to-end infrastructure solution. We built data centers based on blade server architecture, SAN based storage and industrial grade networking on top of Microsoft platform. The projects were valued at Rs 4 and Rs 3 crore, respectively,” informed Kothari.

Bhilai Steel awarded Embee a Rs 2.9-crore project for infrastructure overhaul which included server, storage, virtualization, network access control, and end-point security. Another factor that has helped the systems integrator to maintain its profitability, and stay stable in a tough economy, was the strong systems deployed. “We are not just a SAP partner, but have also implemented SAP B1 internally.

Last year we implemented document management system, travel management system, and also a portal for managing service and RMA using SharePoint,” informed Kothari. Embee now plans to package these internal applications and offer it as a solution to customers.

For FY 2010-11, Embee plans to continue with its focus on infrastructure consolidation and virtualization and SAP implementation. The company will soon venture into remote infrastructure services.

West

 Orient Technologies

Ajay Sawant, CEO, Orient Technologies

Growing marginally, Mumbai-based Orient Technologies posted a topline of Rs 105.1 crore in FY2009-10 over the Rs 103.5 crore of the previous fiscal. President Ajay Sawant attributed the growth to the company’s strategy of cutting down on the volume business and concentrating more on the value business. Orient also focused on providing solutions to customers in an Opex model, which helped it to bag more clients.

Orient strengthened its IT infrastructure management portfolio by offering comprehensive and non-comprehensive AMCs, facilities management services, remote infrastructure management services, 24x7 support, incident-based support, short duration activity-based support, and project management services.

Performance Highlights

• Implemented a Rs 7 crore WAN connectivity and security solution project for Aegis Technology • Undertook a Rs 3.25 crore SAP migration and server virtualization project for Eureka Forbes • Executed a Rs 2.5 crore server and storage virtualization project for Crisil • Developed a dedicated managed services facility

Company Snapshot

Company: Orient Technologies MD: Ajay Sawant Year of inception: 1988 Retail stores: 2 Turnover 2009-10: Rs 105.1 crore Turnover 2008-09: Rs 103.5 crore Employees: 420 Certified employees: 250 Principals: Cisco, HP, Citrix, Fortinet, IBM, Lenovo, Microsoft, McAfee, Symantec

Said Sawant, “We developed a dedicated managed services facility owned and maintained by us. This gave us an edge in servicing our customers better. Our pre-sales team—with expertise across servers and storage, networking, security, and managed services—functions as a consulting arm to the customers, helping them to design cost-effective, scalable and business-apt solutions. The highly-trained support team helps to implement and support these solutions.”

According to Sawant, domain expertise is a differentiating factor which Orient has strived to maintain over the years. Orient also implemented several business process automation systems to improve its operational capabilities, the latest being an ERP software, Navision from Microsoft. “Navision has helped improve the productivity and efficiency of our employees. Reporting and documentation of activities have become much simpler,” he said.

Among the key projects that Orient implemented in FY2009-10 was a Rs 2.5 crore server and storage virtualization project for credit rating company Crisil. The project was executed by replacing 90-odd physical servers with four physical servers using HP Blade Servers, HP EVA 6400 SAN, and VMware vSphere 4.0 virtualization software. Other projects handled by Orient in FY2009-10 were a Rs 7 crore WAN connectivity and security solution deployment for Aegis Technology, and a Rs 3.25 crore SAP migration and server virtualization project for Eureka Forbes.

In FY2010-11 Orient plans to add cloud computing and managed services to its portfolio. It also intends to target the government and PSU verticals with renewed focus while expanding its global footprint by establishing a presence in Dubai.

South

 Locuz Enterprise Solutions

Debraj Dam, VP, Strategic Business and Partner Alliance, Digilink, presenting the award to Vijay Wadhi, MD, Locuz Enterprise Solutions

Registering an impressive growth of 42 percent, Hyderabad-based Locuz Enterprises netted a revenue of Rs 87.4 crore during FY2009-10 over a revenue of Rs 61.6 crore during the last fiscal.

“One of the reasons for revenue growth was the shift of our sales bandwidth into segments which were recession-proof. We focused on sectors such as education, defense and government-funded research. We also looked at new alliances in the high performance computing space, and netted clients such as the Institute of Mathematical Sciences,” said Vijay Wadhi, Managing Director, Locuz. Another move which helped Locuz was a change in the model of rewarding its sales team; the new model also took into consideration faster deal closing which resulted in several early closures of business. The sales team also worked on profitability targets, which resulted in a 600 percent growth in profitability YOY. Last year Locuz was chosen by the Visveswaraiah Technological University to implement the E Vidya project across 50 engineering colleges across Karnataka at a cost of Rs 2 crore. Locuz also bagged an order from DRDO to implement the DRDO Rapid Online Network, a WAN project valued at Rs 4 crore.

Performance Highlights

• Netted a revenue of Rs 87.4 crore during FY2009-10 • Focused on sectors such as education, defense and government- funded research • Bagged an order from DRDO to implement the DRDO Rapid Online Network, a WAN project valued at Rs 4 crore • Implemented Adventnet’s IT management solution which brought the desired control and discipline to its services business

Company Snapshot

Company: Locuz Enterprise Solutions MD: Vijay Wadhi Year of inception: 2000 Turnover 2009-10: Rs 87.4 crore Turnover 2008-09: Rs 61.6 crore Employees: 220 Certified employees: 135 Principals: Oracle, IBM, Dell, NetApp, Symantec, VMware

In a contract worth Rs 3 crore, the company was also chosen as a partner for the high performance computing facility at the National Institute of Science Education & Research in Bhubaneshwar.

During the year, Locuz expanded its alliances in the IT infrastructure software space with LANdesk, Microsoft and ISS. Sensing that customers were reluctant to restart capex spending, Locuz put extra focus on its AMC services which grew by over 80 percent YOY.

“We also introduced some measures toward cost optimization, including not replacing a few roles. In addition, we consciously started focusing on professional services. With every proposal we started to insist on separate professional services, and this added to our bottomline,” said Wadhi. In addition to ERP, Locuz implemented a separate MIS system based on reports from Tally as a part of the ISO guidelines.

To streamline its internal service delivery capabilities, Locuz also implemented Adventnet’s IT management solution which brought the desired control and discipline to its services business.

During the current fiscal, Locuz is betting on business through its parent company, 3i Infotech. There are also plans to expand the storage business by adding more vendors and offering services around storage.

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