The Best Men Won

It's that time of the year when the winners of the prestigious DQ Channels
Excellence awards are announced. While the winners rejoice, we have one word for
the other solution providers who missed their moment of glory in the limelight-work
harder and strive to win these coveted awards

DQ Channels started the work for the awards well over two months back.
Firstly, the entire machinery of the magazine is put into gear to gather
comprehensive information across a cross section of solution providers in the
country. This information is then collated appropriately and furnished to the
panel of judges. They are informed that the names of the candidates and they are
at the liberty to consider any solution provider not included in the names
suggested by DQ Channels.

There are several qualifying parameters that DQ Channels has put in place to
ensure that only the best partners win the awards. One of the first things that
are considered is the overall reach of the solution provider, including its
service network, which denotes how well it can service its clients on a
pan-India level.

Additionally, the SP's commitment to post-sales service is also recorded,
gauged from the investment made in improving its service infrastructure in terms
of manpower addition, training and certifications acquired. The SP's long-term
commitment to business as well its domain expertise is also considered. The
quantum of business helps the panel decide whether it has been successful in
growing with the market.

The panel

DQ Channels made sure that panel had a good participation from vendor companies
who sell largely through solution providers, as well as distributors, to arrive
at a balanced decision. This time, the panel comprised Vivek Malhotra, Director-Sales
and Channels, South Asia. Lenovo; Binod Panda, GM-Enterprise Storage and
Computing, Ingram Micro India; Ajay Verma, Director-Channels and Alliances,
Symantec India as well as Hrishi Parthasarathy, Partner Development Manager-Lead,
Microsoft India.

There are four categories of awards, with one runner-up each. The 'Most
Comprehensive Solution Provider' award was for the SP who has the most
comprehensive solutions, spanning different technologies, in his portfolio,
which demonstrates that his company is proficient in cross selling. Under 'Best
Deployment', the panel had to judge which SP had successfully deployed the
most unique and innovative project in 2005-06.

Candidates for the 'Best Service' award had to have a wide service
network and a good service capability built into his company's corporate DNA.
Then there was the 'Fastest Growing Solution Provider' for SPs who had
registered a consistent growth over the past three years.

The final and most coveted award was the 'Most Successful Solution Provider'
with one runner-up, which is given to a SP who has superseded his peers and is
successful across all categories.

The finalists

After a lot of brain storming and throwing the names of candidates back and
forth, the panel finalized on the award winners. And DQ Channels is proud to
present the name of these companies.

VINITA BHATIA

A Constant Feature

Team Computers has been a winner of DQ Channels Excellence awards since
they were instituted four years ago, across various categories. This year, it
has bagged two awards, which has made its promoter, Ranjan Chopra, a happy man

RANJAN CHOPRA TEAMCOMPUTERS

With the intention to become one of the largest players of business
intelligence and data analytics space, Team Computers registered a rather modest
growth in 2005-06. It has become a more aggressive player in this domain during
the last year and has also launched business intelligent solutions under its
information services division. Team Computers recently bagged an order from
Apollo Tyres for the deployment of business intelligence solutions.

Achieving a turnover of Rs 135 crore in 2005-06, Team reinvented its focus
and strategies to acquire a domineering position in the business intelligence
domain apart from continuing to retain its core competencies in IT
infrastructure management. Accordingly, Team tied-up with QlikTech, a Swedish
pioneer, in doling out business intelligence solutions for the growing
enterprises. It also entered into an alliance with software giant Microsoft
signing as solution provider for their product Microsoft Dynamics NAV. The
solution provider also set-up a global service datacenter for remote
infrastructure management called Team Remote Infrastructure Management.

Sighting great potential in the retailing arena and to make the most of
retailing buzz, Team has included retail specific products to its basket of
product offerings by partnering with Iceland-based Landsteinar Strengur. It is
looking forward to adding another Rs 10 crore to its revenue stream through its
venture into retail solutions selling. As its immediate future endeavor Team has
decided to initiate retail store-cum-demo centers at Bangalore, where retail
customers can see solutions suitable for retailing environment. Team has also
plans to expand in domains like healthcare and insurance as well, which are
growing at a blazing pace and adopting technology products with greater ease.
The system integrator has recently also tied-up with OrangeScape, for promoting
its HR application suite.

-DQC NEWS BUREAU

Agile Player

The runner-up for the DQ Channels Excellence award for 'The Most
Successful Solution Provider' PC Solutions has displayed great agility when it
comes to changing business dynamics

Devendra Taneja PC SOLUTIONS

Last fiscal, New Delhi-based PC Solutions (PSPL) formed two business units
focusing on the burgeoning government and SMB segments. As the company moves
towards further maturity, more activity is likely to be seen within these
segments. Showing a steady growth, PSPL saw its revenues go up by more than 22
percent to touch Rs 126 crore for the year 2005-06. The company's previous
year's revenue was Rs 103 crore. PSPL achieved many milestones in 2005-06 and
has implemented various projects across brand and technologies with leading IT
companies. It focused on SMB customers in NCR regions and deployed projects on
technologies from leading OEMs like HP, IBM, Lenovo, Cisco, EMC, Microsoft,
Veritas, Citrix, Legato, and VMware etc. A large number of consultancy
assignments were also undertaken around security audits leading to BS7799
certifications for customer organizations and Linux adoption for specific
projects.

PSPL generated around Rs 11 crore by taking up facilities management work,
however, managed services work is also catching up fast as it has contributed Rs
8 crore. It started as a focused organization to provide third party
maintenance. However, with time, the company evolved and is now offering an
array of services to its set of 150 clients, spread across the country.

The solution provider has competencies in solutions like security,
infrastructure management, optimization of current infrastructure, mail
messaging, on NT and Linux and disaster recovery. Though PC Solutions has been
able to grow itself quite sizably in the services segment, finding the right
kind of people has been a challenge for the company. In keeping with its growth
strategy to expand in segments like SMB or government, in the coming year the
company plans to hire close to 225 people to take the current employee figure of
523 to 744 employees.

While the company has generated about 30 percent of its revenue from ITeS, IT
and Telecom, segments like BFSI and government are fast catching up at 15
percent and 12 percent respectively. Moving forward, the company is planning to
increase its revenue generation from government and public sector units. PC
Solutions implemented an ERP solution along with data recovery for an automobile
giant. It deployed four HP RP8420 servers and two HP 12000-storage boxes of 32TB
data size, integrating these systems to the backend infrastructure. The project
was valued at Rs 8.50 crore and was completed within three months. It was one of
the largest projects implemented in NCR and was complex because of the
implementation of Legato along with HP tape libraries.

Another ERP solution valued at Rs 70 lakh was deployed for a pharma major.
The company has support locations at Bangalore, Hyderabad, Pune, Mumbai and
Chennai. It has 30 to 50 engineers and technical people located in Mumbai,
Hyderabad, Bangalore, Pune, Delhi and other cities. It also received the ISO
9001:2000 and BS 7799 for internal quality audit last fiscal.

-DQC NEWS BUREAU

Think, Build and Operate

This is Team Computers mantra, which it applies to its internal people and
processes, besides extending it to its customers as well

Recruitment, training and certification-Team Computers went all out to beef
up its service network in the country. It invested Rs 3 crore in upgrading its
post-sales service infrastructure. Its dedication to service is evident from the
fact that of its total manpower strength of 1,400, his 1,100 people are in its
service and support division. And last fiscal it hired 400 people for this
division.

RANJAN CHOPRA TEAM COMPUTERS

It has invested over Rs 3 crore in service delivery, infrastructure,
centralized call management software and executive reporting systems. And it is
still coming up with ways to improvise this setup and make it even more
client-friendly. Team Computers' philosophy is 'Reach is cost, penetration
is profit'. Building a service network means absorbing the increased cost
while focusing on achieving penetration. Team supports more than 600 customers
across the country, which makes it imperative for it to have a strong backend
support network. The company has wed the best global processes internally and
extends the same to its clients as well.

Team is a service provider of IT solutions and has expertise in
infrastructure management services, system integration including hardware and
software, custom development, open source solution, ERP and business
intelligence. It also offers enterprise solutions with focus on executive
information systems.

Team does not refer to its personnel as manpower but as 'Team members'.
And this is why the company maintains a non-hierarchical working environment
with transparency, which can provide ample opportunities for bringing out
everyone's creativity.

Last fiscal, Team got certifications from EMC, Microsoft, Cisco, IBM and HP.
It reinvented its focus and strategies to acquire a domineering position in the
business intelligence domain apart from continuing to retain its core
competencies in IT infrastructure management. It has also set-up a global
service datacenter for remote infrastructure management called TRIM (Team Remote
Infrastructure Management). The datacenter is expected to be functional shortly.

However, to become a one-stop-shop solution provider for the vast range of
customer needs during the last financial year Team has joined forces with a
number of new vendors to lend a holistic touch to its product portfolio.

Sighting great potential in the retailing arena and to make the most of
retailing buzz, Team has included retail specific products to its basket of
product offerings by partnering with Iceland-based Landsteinar Strengur. Team is
looking forward to adding another Rs 10 crore to its revenue stream through its
venture into retail solutions selling. As its immediate future endeavor Team has
decided to initiate retail store cum demo centers at Bangalore, where retail
customers can see solutions suitable for retailing environment.

-DQC NEWS BUREAU

Service Is Be-All And End-All

Continuing to focus on providing customers the best of service, Precision has
planned a series of new initiatives besides increasing its investments to reach
out to its customers nationally

Murali Mohan Precision Group

The winner for 'Best Service' for this year's DQ Channels Excellence
awards, Precision Group is valued at Rs 150 crore. The IT group, headquartered
at Chennai, has offices in Bangalore, Hyderabad, Mumbai, Delhi, Coimbatore,
Trichy, Madurai and Vizag, with over 600 professionals on board. Given its
strategic business associations with HP, Microsoft, IBM, HCL, Toshiba, Cisco and
Nortel, Precision addresses the end-to-end IT infrastructure requirements of its
clients through various group companies focusing on specific business areas.
They include-Precision Infomatic focusing on computer products, software
deployment, consulting and integration, ERP solutions, training and post-sales
services business; Precision Techserve focusing on net-centric advanced
technology solutions and managed services business; Precision Galaxy focusing on
providing solutions to the computing needs of the SOHO segment; Precision
Techconet focusing on providing software solution services to customers and
Precision Biometric focusing on developing hardware and software to provide
Biometric solutions.

In order to provide customers quality service and support, Precision has
invested in the requisite infrastructure, processes and systems. On offer are a
host of warranty and post warranty services. These include on-call services,
comprehensive onsite services, labor only support, resident engineer support,
24x7 services, IT infrastructure (facility) management services, remote
infrastructure management services and network consulting services, which
includes assessment, strategy, architecture, design, planning. Besides this, the
company offers enterprise network integration services, network operations
support services, performance optimization and capacity planning, systems and
network management services as well as network security planning and its
implementation. Other areas of expertise include network security management
services for intrusion detection, vulnerability analysis; network auditing
services for performance, availability and security; group ware and messaging
solutions; datacenter consulting, integration and support services; ITIL-based
IT infrastructure service management process implementation services and
training services-technology orientation and soft skills.

Precision has made its support available at various locations across
Tamilnadu, which include Chennai, Trichy, Coimbatore, Madurai and Tuticorn in
addition to Bangalore, Hyderabad, Vizag, Vijayawada, Mumbai, Pune and Delhi. It
has over 300 service and support personnel including a team of Microsoft,
Novell, Sun Solaris, Cisco, Checkpoint, Lotus and Krone certified professionals
that address client needs.

-Subbalakshmi BM

Simple And Effective Deployment

Ensuring no single point of failure and enabling its telecom client to
upgrade its existing infrastructure, was the objective behind Apara Enterprise
Solutions' award winning deployment

Apara Enterprise Solutions bagged the DQ Channels Excellence award for the
'Best Deployment' this year for a project it undertook for one of its
telecom clients. Apara's objective was to enable its client to upgrade its
existing service as well as offer it a way to expand its services using the
existing infrastructure.

MS SIDHU APARA ENTERPRISE SOLUTIONS

What set the project apart

The uniqueness of the project was the fact that Apara's telecom client is
reportedly the largest last mile telecom provider over wire in Mumbai and Delhi.
It uses DSL-based services off Apara's core routers and this service has
picked up aggressively in Mumbai and Delhi.

The telco had one clear-cut requirement-no single point of failure. The
design requirements were such that it had to ensure that the kind of 'minimal
service' that people take for granted with their telephone service that can be
offered via the Internet access network.

The design methodology was to 'keep it simple' and yet be able to make
services like e-mail, net access, web browsing easily accessible and highly
redundant. The design had to use the existing infrastructure, add capability and
build in future growth, which made it extremely challenging.

Project design

The project involved the migration, integration and expansion of a 3Com-based
network for POPs across Delhi and Mumbai. Successful migration of all the client's
services (billing, messaging, etc) from the existing one Alpha server to Sun's
V880 server was done without any service failure for the end-customer.

3Com routers and switches were configured and deployed at their new POPs and
at the central sites. OSPF multi-path routing was also configured between the
POPs and central site eliminating any single point of failure. At the central
site, BGP was migrated from its existing Cisco routers to the 3Com routers and
later migrated BGP from dual ISP setup to single ISP setup with redundant
connectivity. Apara also conducted the acceptance test for each and every
product supplied to its client according to tender requirements and TECRG
guidelines. Apart from the specific scope of work, Apara also configured
broadband links by using unique protocols like BGP and OSPF.

Project execution challenges

The project involved many challenges of implementation like sizing of cooling,
power and space needs. This in turn required making an inspection of what was
needed, how much space, power and cooling was readily available. Whatever was
needed had to be made available either by the client or by Apara. The project
also involved aligning back-to-back with vendors as well as employing Apara's
own work force to ensure smooth sailing of the project. While the project
schedule was met and the basic services rolled out on time, typical problems
like tender compliance and value-added services were a huge project management
challenge, which were addressed by having dedicated project managers at each
location.

Investment and customer benefit

The budget for the entire project was over Rs 30 crore. Delivery challenges and
some incorrect specification led to more overruns in the budget. Additional
people were needed on the project management side because of the complexity of
the project and a two-location implementation.

The deployment helped Apara's telecom client become the number one ISP in
Mumbai and Delhi. The benefits are more from the fact that people in these
cities are happy that the client who has a huge last mile base and offers
value-added services by using the existing infrastructure.

-SUBBALAKSHMI BM

At The Frontier Of Commitment

Working as a team and committing all their resources, Frontier Business
Systems was able to finish the implementation of its project for BHEL ahead of
time, much to the satisfaction of the client

Frontier Business Systems, runner-up for the DQ Channels Excellence award for
'Best Deployment' got this honor for a project it undertook for Bharat Heavy
Electricals Ltd (BHEL). Valued at Rs 25 crore, the project was implemented at
Hyderabad, Trichy, Chennai and Ranipet and spread across a span of three to five
years. The project required complete systems integration involving products from
IBM's servers and workstations, Lenovo desktops and laptops, Tivoli software,
Cisco switches, routers and firewalls, Emerson power solutions, HP peripherals,
Tivoli and Symantec. Additionally, Frontier also offered its client
infrastructure management services and a 98 percent uptime commitment to the
project.

RAVI VERDES FRONTIER BUSINESS SYSTEMS

Large deployment

For Frontier, this was the largest single order project that it had executed.
What was unique about the project was the fact that all the skills that Frontier
had as an organization were utilized in the areas of computing (Intel-based as
well as enterprise), networking, power conditioning, software and services.

The technical part aside, the project also called for large scale
co-ordination with various vendors to ensure overall logistics, timely delivery
and a well thought-out, detailed, professional execution plan for integration of
various components across many sites of BHEL.

Solution design

The project involved supply; and this was not just integration of servers,
desktops and laptops, but also network-based CAD/CAM plotting and printing
solutions, security-based solutions, network authenticity and power
conditioning, over the client's existing and partly modified network. The
client had spelt their end-requirement and this included enterprise management
solutions, security management, database management, asset management and
tracking, storage and operating system management for the existing set-up and
for the proposed new ones.

Nature of the deployment

The deployment/delivery team at Frontier had started their groundwork much
before the supplies started. They got into action right from the post-supplies,
during-supplies to the after-supplies activities.

Problems did crop up while delivering some of the components, as it was the
time when Mumbai had historical rains and floods and some materials got damaged
during that time. It did not face much problem during the actual installation
and integration.

Investment and client benefit

The project is a lease-cum-rental deal for a period of three to five years. The
client did not invest on an outright purchase policy and they have the policy of
replacing and adding infrastructure once in every five years.

With a stiff target on pricing, delivery and integration, Frontier could meet
the client's expectation and the deployment has benefited the client since
they had their own infrastructure in place on time.

-SUBBALAKSHMI BM

Growing, Every Year

Visesh Infotecnics has been growing by around 100 percent for the past two
fiscals. In 2005-06 too it managed to scale its revenues to Rs 78 crore from Rs
40 crore, a jump of 96 percent, making it the natural winner of the DQ Channels
Excellence awards for 'Fastest Growing Solution Provider'

One of the well-known solution providers of the northern region, Visesh
Infotecnics has grown its business manifold during the last financial year. It
made significant breakthrough in the BPO/KPO sector by initiating operations for
US-based Fortune 500 company-Echostar Communications Corporation, and setting
up its own KPO.

Sanjiv Bhavnani Visesh Infotecnics

Visesh had a busy period during 2005-06 forging deals with various overseas
corporations. The company formed a 50:50 joint venture with US-based Cyberworks
Software Inc to address the KPO/BPO market, under the name 'Cyberworks Visesh
LLC' at Oregon, USA. Making headway into the KPO sector, Visesh commenced KPO/BPO
activities under the name 'V Connect' from a high-tech contact center in
Gurgaon, with a $20 million contract from US-based Fortune 500 company-Echostar
Communications Corporations.

Last fiscal was important for this solution providing company in more ways
than one, since apart from offering distribution rights to Visesh, various
offshore corporate showed interest in making strategic investments in Visesh. In
line with this, US-based Duke Equity made its first investment in Visesh
Infotecnics through a private placement of one million equity shares.
Additionally, World Bank funded IndiaCo Ventures also made a strategic
investment in Visesh through a private placement of 5,00,000 warrants
convertible at a price of Rs 50 per share.

Taking into consideration 360-degree growth of this India-based solution
providing company, Dalal Street Journal rated Visesh as an 'OutPerformer'.
Visesh was also declared winner of the Deloitte Technology Fast 50 India; and
Deloitte Technology Fast 500 Asia-Pacific companies. Visesh also managed to take
home runner-up trophy of DQ Channels Excellence Award for solution deployment
project 'Treasury Management System' for GE Capital.

Moreover, Sanjiv Bhavnani, CEO, Visesh Infotecnics was recognized by US-based
International Who's Who of Professionals and Madison Who's Who of Executive
and Professionals for his exemplary achievements and contributions to the
business community in the year 2005-06.

This fiscal Visesh is aiming to grow at a stupendous pace and achieve 100
percent growth target. The company has set ambitious targets for itself that
includes US launch of VIL's NSTL-certified, shrink-wrapped ERP offering for
the SMB segment 'powERPro'. It also plans to build datacenter capacity for
its web-hosting division 'InfraSurf', that is one of the biggest revenue
earning streams for the company.

-DQC NEWS BUREAU

Growing Gradually

Progressive Infotech grew its revenue by 85 percent in 2005-06 making it
the runner-up for the DQ Channels Excellence award for 'Fastest Growing
Solution Provider'

Progressive Infotech is one of the five odd solution-providing companies that
registered above 50 percent growth in revenues in the last fiscal. And for the
past three years, the company has been striding towards achieving a faster
growth rate than its peers. Last fiscal, its revenues jumped to Rs 74 crore from
Rs 40 crore in the previous year.

PRATEEK GARG PROGRESSIVE INFOTECH

Three factors played a big role in accelerating its growth. The company
claims that its strategy, people and quality work made its topline strong. It
notes that its manpower has the leadership qualities that are combined well and
collaborated to drive the company towards success.

Planning of strategies, teamwork and a concentrated focus on its target
customer verticals have helped the company consolidate its business. Another
aspect for its success is quality, where Progressive laid maximum emphasis. The
growth of the company has been faster than that of the market because of the
successful blend of services in accordance to customer demand, which proved to
be effective from the professional point of view and also gave immense value to
customers.

Partnership with HP played a key role in triggering and managing the growth
of Progressive Infotech. Besides that, the company also put in a lot of effort
in quality certification that is a mark of assurance and satisfaction for its
customers. The company has already received ISO 9001:2000, ISO 20000-1:2005 and
ISO 27001:2005 certifications, and these benchmarks help its brand image.

The company also expanded its footprint, to move its focus to the northern
market, with the opening of an office in Mumbai. This branch office has already
yielded good results and now Progressive is planning to move down South with
offices in Hyderabad, Bangalore and Chennai.

To sustain its growth, Progressive took initiatives in the US for a remote
management project for its global customers. This center will remotely monitor a
client's IT infrastructure problems and troubleshoot them, thereby saving the
latter time and cost. It also set-up a remote infrastructure management center
at Noida, whose practice areas include people capability maturity model (PCMM),
information technology infrastructure library (ITIL), and British standards
(BS15000). Progressive's remote managed services portfolio incorporates
end-to-end IT infrastructure monitoring and management encompassing networks,
systems, applications, database services and managed security services.

The company's strategic business units are on a sustained growth path to
deliver combined revenues in excess of Rs 120 crore in 2006-07. It hopes to
touch Rs 500 crore by the end of this decade. It is present in 80 locations and
has 450 people in its team.

-DQC NEWS BUREAU

A Bouquet To Offer

Allied Digital Services offers solutions that leverage the power of
collaboration-people, ideas and relationships. Having partnered with major
technology companies like Intel, Microsoft, IBM and HP, the company addresses
the requirements of all the business verticals in India

Allied Digital Services (ADS) has its fingers in several pies, which is why
it walked away with the award for the 'Most Comprehensive Solution Provider'.
It helps manufacturing companies setup their IT infrastructure providing optimum
availability and supporting their ERP system or SCM solution.

Nitin Shah Allied Digital Services

It also offers solutions for mission-critical, high-transaction processing
environments to companies operating in BFSI. It helps governments to integrate
information technology to create citizen-centric services.

Research institutes use high performance computing clusters designed by ADS,
while it helps media companies to store and manage their large multimedia
digital assets in highly scalable storage systems. ADS has grouped its turnkey
solutions into 12 technology areas. Under enterprise computing it offers a line
of servers from HP, IBM and Sun from entry-level and single-CPU servers to
multiple-CPU, high-end servers based on various processors. With server
management technology, customers not only see what IT assets they have, but also
how they are used and how they perform.

The storage solutions group provides products, services, and solutions for
information storage and its management, with its partnership with EMC and
Veritas. It offers solutions, integrates networked storage technologies, storage
area networks, high-end storage systems, backup and data protection software and
services.

ADS is also a provider of electronic messaging consulting and deployment
services to a wide range of customers and its consulting and deployment services
revolve around electronic messaging overlapping groupware, intranet, extranet
and world wide web. It also provides the complete family of messaging-related
consulting services.

It also has certified installers for Systimax, AMP, Molex and all other
structured cabling systems. It installs, terminates, tests, and/or maintains
fiber optic cabling, backbone cabling, CAT 3, 5 and 6, riser and horizontal
cabling for voice and data systems. It provides site survey that includes
evaluation of new or existing facilities, identification, testing and
documentation of existing cable runs.

ADS has partnered with Israel-based CallUp Net to offer a unified messaging
solution to telecom service providers. UMS provides the subscriber with the
unified message box ie a single point of access to all the three message types
namely voice, fax, and e-mail anytime anywhere from virtually any communication
device like telephone, personal computer or web browser.

-VINITA BHATIA

All In One

The runner-up for DQ Channels Excellence awards for the 'Most
Comprehensive' Solution Provider, PC Solutions overwhelmed the other
contenders in this category because it has partnered with almost every leading
vendor

New Delhi-based PC Solutions has just about every leading IT brand in its
portfolio and has managed to offer a spectrum of solutions around networking,
power, servers, storage etc. Some of its partnerships are with Microsoft,
Veritas, Citrix, EMC, Nortel, Nitix, HP, IBM, Novell, Sun, Packeteer, APC, EMC,
Veritas, Nortel, etc. It has competencies in security, infrastructure
management, optimization of current infrastructure, mail messaging on NT and
Linux.

DEVENDRA TANEJA PC SOLUTIONS

While adding new brands to its range, PC Solutions' main objective has been
to provide solutions to its customers from a single source. It attributes its
success to its empowered employees and loyal customers.

It has manpower of 425 people, of which a good number of people are in the
post-sales and service business. It has six Sun certified engineers, 32 HP
certified engineers, 250 Microsoft certified systems engineer, 360 customer
support engineers and 35 customer support managers.

Under its services offerings, PC Solutions offers facility management
services (FMS), network and systems integration, IT project consultancy and
execution, disaster recovery planning and management, IT security planning and
implementation besides training and educating its clients. Under FMS it has
HelpDesk management and monitoring, software support, network management, system
update and enhancements, asset management, vendor management, disaster recovery
planning and management, business continuity planning and management besides
on-site logistics plan.

PC Solutions also offers pre-sales consultancy services, which includes
feasibility study, project report, vendor evaluation, product evaluation, IT
deployment and implementation plan. Under software solutions, the company looks
after solutions for messaging, database and document management, clustering,
enterprise infrastructure framework, security, disaster recovery, storage and
backup. For these it has signed up with Microsoft, Lotus, GroupWise, Share
Point, Veritas, CA Unicenter, TNG, IBM Tivoli, Citrix, Checkpoint, Symantec,
Trend Micro and Legato. Last fiscal, PC Solutions successfully executed many
projects. Among these, the biggest were for an automobile major and a
pharmaceutical company that were valued at Rs 8.50 crore and Rs 70 lakh,
respectively.

-DQC NEWS BUREAU

A Special Mention

For the first time, the DQ Channels Excellence awards had to create a
special category. And this was for Accel Frontline, a company that all members
of the panels felt deserved an award for its good work and consistent
performance over the past few years

Accel Frontline's big bet on services is proving to be a fruitful
initiative now. The company, which consciously shifted its business focus about
two years back, from hardware selling to services, is seeing some traction in
it. And this has also helped it get a special mention and award, as recommended
by the panel of judges for DQ Channels Excellence awards.

NR Panicker Accel Frontline

Overall, Accel grew at 32 percent over the last year from Rs 163 crore
turnover in 2004-05 to Rs 215 crore in 2005-06. The important fact is services
business contributed nearly 50 percent to the total turnover.

Accel established itself as an enterprise solution provider by specializing
in IT infrastructure services, management services, applications, consulting,
warranty and support services. In fact, revenue came in from all the streams of
services. It also set-up disaster recovery and business continuity services
(data recover and backup) practice. Thus, the company marked its foray into
managed services practice.

It strengthened its business partner relationship with Sun by increasing the
revenue from $6 million in 2004-05 to $10 million in 2005-06. It also stabilized
its Xerox operations and recorded consistent growth.

Some of the new tie-ups Accel made included signing up with Apple to focus on
digital asset management and media labs, entering into a sales agreement with
Group Technologies AG for its iQ.Suite-a modular solution for e-mail lifecycle
management.

Accel won several prestigious contracts in 2005-06. It includes a Rs 20 crore
deal with the Life Insurance Corporation for providing hardware infrastructure,
preferred IT vendor contract with Bharti through IBM Global Services and chosen
IT infrastructure partner for State Bank of India to roll out core-banking
solutions.

On the services front, it inked deals with Hindustan Times, Directorate of
Treasuries (Kerala) and Public Works Department (Mumbai). The company was able
to bag some software deals from JNU Delhi for its university management system
and GEMS Schools, Dubai for development and implementation of school management
solutions. Accel also clinched a multi-million dollar contract from Jurong Port,
to set-up and manage its offshore development center in India.

It plans to expand its global software operations with focus on the US
markets to strengthen its ESS division. It wants to enhance its professional
services offering by establishing itself as a key player in DR and BCP space.

-DQC NEWS BUREAU