Following the progression of its flagship product Akshar Naveen to the Linux platform, Artech Infosystems (erstwhile Softek) is seeking tie-ups with systems integrators to further its reach among government and industrial sectors. Said Yogendra Tripathi, Country Head and Senior VP, Artech India, "Since Akshar Naveen is a very niche product, we will join forces only with those SIs who have a strong hold in the government sector. This will lend the much-needed thrush to our product."

The company first unveiled Akshar Naveen office suite in four Indian languages - Hindi, Bangla, Punjabi and Gujarati, in July last year. It has received good acceptance among government institutions, which rely on native and bilingual language computing. With the computerization of government offices, especially since e-governance is happening in full swing, this vertical has emerged as the prominent purchaser IT products. "We want to tap this expanding vertical through the concerted efforts of our marketing team and SI partners," Tripathi added.

It is noteworthy that Artech has earlier taken on board reseller partners to market Akshar Naveen but the relationship has not proved beneficial for the vendor. Giving a judicious reply on this fact Harinder Singh, Senior Manager-Products and Communications quipped, "Basically Akshar Naveen is not a push product that would require box pushing agents. Still we have been able to get encouraging business through reseller partners that we appointed last year. But as per the figures gathered on direct versus channel business, we have reworked our channel sales policy."

In addition to channel appointments, Artech is equally bullish over instituting relationships with hardware vendors, who can bundle Akshar Naveen with their hardware offerings. "The urge to migrate Akshar Naveen on Linux has emerged from the OS' widespread popularity. Almost 25% to 30% of our customers have migrated to Linux, which is a large base," informed Tripathi.

Rajeev Malik, Chief Technology Officer at Artech India informed, "The only objective behind transferring it to Linux is to facilitate multilingual computing for Linux customers as well."

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