"We aim to enable solution providers towards adding business logic to our solutions and platform"

With India registering a revenue growth of 40% between 2004 and 2005 for SCO,
the Unix software technology provider is more than positive about its future in
India. Tim Negris voices that the way to gain a strong foothold in the country
would be by forging more and more partnerships, be it to increase the software
development through ISVs; or enhancing its operations. He also talks about
increasing the number of software developers at its New Delhi center.

Tim Negris Senior VP, Marketing, SCO

"We are working on a two-pronged strategy to further enhance our software development capabilities and also to increase our focus towards consulting services"

If we go back a couple of years, there have been some big
Linux deployments within India and most of these deployments have been a loss to
Unix, rather than its long time rival Microsoft. In a scenario like this, how do
you look at the Indian market?

The way we see it is that India has a long list of customers for SCO.
Strategically, it is one of the fastest moving markets for the company. Whether
is the banking segment or the financial institutions, retail or the
manufacturing space, we have several customers in the Indian subcontinent,
spanning across various verticals. The growing list of customers tells us that
we have a great future over here.

Customers evaluate different products and choose us because
of our extremely low cost of management. Additionally, the level of manpower and
expertise required to manage our products is extremely low when compared to our
competitors' products.

Research firm Gartner has indicated that India is poised to
have some of the largest IT growth of any market around the world in terms of IT
spending. Moreover, India has been a great place to work with a 40% increase in
revenues between 2004 and 2005. So moving forward we are confident of performing
well.

What is your current focus as far as the Indian operations
are concerned? How important is this market for your global operations?

At present, we are focusing our efforts to further cement our operations
within India. This would include formulating partnerships, adding more people to
our development center and eventually creating better opportunities for the
company within this region.

We have always considered India as an important market for
our global operations. Our development center in India is a key location for us,
especially with the kind of talent that we have over here. Most of our
developers here have excellent technical knowledge and key development skills
that produce outstanding products that rival those of our competitors.

What kind of development work is happening at your center
in New Delhi? What are your plans to further strengthen its manpower?

We have a development center based in New Delhi, where close to 50 software
professionals are engaged in developing core Unix related applications for our
global operations. We are likely to increase this figure by 50% within the
coming six months.

Moving forward, we are looking at taking more of such work to
the Indian center, so there would be more work with more people.

You have just unveiled the alpha version of your mobile
digital services suite — Me Inc. How are you planning to launch it within the
telecom segment of India?

Me Inc is a suite of personal mobile digital services that enable improved
communications, collaboration and control for groups of any size and type. With
the help of Me Inc edge processor, smart phones and other mobile devices are
likely to evolve into high-powered productivity tools that everyone wants them
to be.

This is the alpha version of Me Inc and we plan to
commercially launch this product by January end, 2006. Once the product is
available, telecom service providers would find it extremely useful to increase
their customer engagement. We are confident that this product will help service
providers cater to the unmet customer demand for an increased productivity,
while on the move.

At present we have incorporated features like Vote (for
public polls), Shout (voice messaging) and People (people directory) within Me
Inc.

Moving forward, we would add features like Schedule (multi-party scheduling) and
Action (workflow alignment) into the suite as well.

How do you work with the ISV community and what kind of
partnerships are you looking at with respect to your Indian operations? In what
ways can ISVs align themselves with your product offerings?

We have a multi-level channel approach towards making our
products and solutions available in the global markets. Under this strategy, we
work very closely with ISVs, OEMs and other partners.

Within the Indian region, we are working with 50 ISVs. They
are primarily engaged in developing applications and solutions for our
customers. The idea is to enable them towards adding business logic to our set
of solutions and platform.

In our bid to increase the software development within India,
we are already partnering with Ahmedabad-based SMG Infotech and Bangalore-based
Integra to provide development support for our operations. Further on, we are
working on a two-pronged strategy to further enhance our software development
capabilities and also to increase our focus towards consulting services.

Currently, we have several big customers that ask for
consulting services, so we want to have a strong base of consulting practice as
we move along. Here we are looking at partnerships where we can align ourselves
with big companies like TCS and work towards building applications and
solutions.

ZIA ASKARI