NZ-India alliance broadens

By ADAM GIFFORD

Eagle Technology Group has extended its alliance with Indian software house Kale Consultants to encompass major application development and e-commerce projects.

The alliance was formed in 1997 to do year-2000 compliance work for clients, including the Bank of New Zealand and the Department of Social Welfare.

With that work coming to an end, it wants to provide a broader range of services.

Shekhar Pamerkar, Kale's New Zealand-based business manager, says the alliance is looking positive, with several prospects close to signing. "The last few months were a bit quiet. People were apprehensive about Y2K so took defensive strategy," Mr Pamerkar says.

"I think this year will be different and we've already started talking to customers more positively.

"The agreement we have allows Eagle and Kale to work together. Eagle has a good customer base in New Zealand and we have the skills and people as far as application software development goes, so we can offer a full range of services."

Eagle managing director Trevor Eagle says his firm has built up a relationship of trust with Kale.

"This alliance allows us to quote for large software developments which otherwise we didn't have the people to do," Mr Eagle says.

"We can do the analysis end of it, prepare the application and get it coded with Kale, so it doesn't necessitate keeping a large stock of programmers.

Mr Pamerkar says work can be done here or back in India, depending on the size of the project.

While the attraction of Indian software firms to some markets is the relatively low cost of getting a highly-skilled workforce, New Zealand is competitive on price.

"When you throw in the cost of communications, overheads and travel, you don't come up with a dramatic cost advantage.

"The advantage of going to India is the sheer availability of skills," Mr Pamerkar says. In Poonah, where Kale has a research and development centre, there are more than 70 learning institutions turning out IT graduates up to PhD level.

"India is a major exporter of software as well as skills. Thinking there is always focused on exports," Mr Pamerkar says.

The Economist magazine recently estimated 30 per cent of companies started in Silicon Valley in recent years have been started by immigrants, a large percentage from India and China.

Kale is no stranger to the New Zealand market.

It first came here about five years ago to develop a passenger revenue accounting system for Air New Zealand, which it continues to support.

It also migrated Social Welfare's databases from Oracle 3 to Oracle 4.5, and helped EDS with a project extracting business rules from Unisys Linc code.

It has developed a worldwide client list, specialising in airlines, healthcare and banking.

Mr Pamerkar says Kale can develop applications from scratch on a wide range of platforms and languages, using its 250 developers in Mumbai and Poonah.

"A lot of people are looking to web enable their applications for the net. We have a division with 50 developers focused entirely on that."