CA to train partners on Ingres platform

Computer Associates India will start training solution providers to build

applications on its open source platform, Ingres. It is currently holding talks

with training partners like NIIT, which will conduct courses on Ingres and the

curriculum should be finalized by the end of this calendar year.

Said Rajendra Dhavale, Consulting Director, CA India, "E-governance is

taking off in a big way in the country. There exists a great opportunity of

offering open-source-based applications for these projects. Since most of these

projects will be deployed by solution providers, we would like to empower them

offer these applications on Ingres."

Rajendra noted that partners getting to this place should start with

e-governance projects, because open-source based applications are not available

in this space and therefore customized products will be in demand. Also, since

most government institutions are just starting with e-governance deployments, so

they don't have a lot of legacy systems that need to be migrated onto the new

platform.

By offering open-source based OS and applications, the total investment of

the overall projects will come down drastically and Ingres-certified partners

can leverage on this cost efficiencies to bag more contracts from government and

educational institutions. Besides development of applications, solution

providers can also look forward to continual revenue from the service of these

solutions. Training the users on the applications can also be developed as

another revenue stream.

But Rajendra cautioned that partners who want to get into offering

open-source based applications should have good domain knowledge of the vertical

they are targeting and should bring a sustained support strategy to the table.

"If they deploy an open-source based solution and decide to move away from

the business, they should ensure that the customer still gets support for the

project," he added.

VINITA BHATIA