IT Conclave ends on a high note

Highlighting the eminence of IT in the state of Orissa, the IT Association of
Orissa (ITAO) hosted the state's first IT Conclave on March 5 in Bhubaneswar,
followed by ITAO Awards 2010 the next day. The DQ Week was the exclusive IT
media partner for the event. The event was supported by Orissa Computer
Application Center (OCAC), the state's nodal agency and Compass, the largest IT
association of East India.

About 150 channel players across the state converged in the state capital to
participate in the conference, in which the association discussed potential
opportunities of IT in the state. The event saw series of presentations from the
sponsors and other members of the IT fraternity. Talking about the reasons for
holding the conclave, Manoj Lalani, President, ITAO, said, "We came up with the
idea of this conference as we wanted to do something unique in the channel
space. Expos are definitely an option but we wanted to do something different
for the channel partners across the state." Dayanand Ratho, Secretary, ITAO,
said, "Channel partners from Bhubaneswar, Cuttack, Jeypore, Rourkela and
Sambalpur gathered to witness the first IT Conclave in the state. The conclave
enabled us to highlighted the tremendous growth of IT in the state."

The event was conducted in two phases-Customer Summit and Channel Summit on
two separate days. In the Customer Summit, the program touched upon the growth
and opportunities in the state from an end-user perspective. The Channel Summit
was directed towards the channel business in the state and explored the growth
potentials from a channel perspective.

The event kick started with Manohar Malani, CEO, NCS Computech discussing the
needs for security solutions in the SMB and SME segments, apart from elaborating
on futuristic trends in security solutions space. Malani further educated the
partners on the subjects of spamming and phishing. "We opted for holding the
event in two phases, primarily due to two factors. Firstly, we wanted to provide
customers with a platform to interact directly with vendors and channel
partners. Secondly, as most vendors were keen on expanding in the Orissa
upcountry markets, we decided to provided them with a dais to directly interact
with the upcountry channel players at a single venue," Ratho added.

Subrat Kumar Prustey, DGM-Enterprise, BSNL said, "ITAO can act as a catalyst
to facilitate PC retailers and channel partners to sell BSNL products as direct
selling agents (DSAs). Out target for this year is to expand across Orissa and
we hope to appoint around 18,000 DSAs." Similarly, Canon, LG, Western Digital
and IBM showed a keen interest to increase their channel bases and spread across
class-C and D cities. Speaking about Canon's channel plans in Orissa, Ratneshwar
Jha, Senior Territory Manager-Bhubaneswar and Jharkhand, Canon, said, "In 2009,
we had a sales growth of 27 percent, of which Orissa contributed 34 percent of
the national growth. Our revenue was at Rs 840 crore in FY 09-10 and now, for
this FY, we are targeting to garner more than Rs 1,000 crore. We hope that
Orissa will contribute significantly to that growth target."