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No.730, CMH Road, 1st Stage, Indiranagar, Bangalore ? 560 038 Telefax: 080-5215556, 5219016, 5202313 Email: maitsr@vsnl.com Website: www.mait.com
PRESS RELEASE
MAIT ORGANIZES NATIONAL CONFERENCE ON "OPEN SOURCE SOFTWARE: A NEW DIRECTION FOR INDIA?" Sponsored by IBM India Ltd. at Bangalore
� The Event is to explore and pave a new direction for the Country in its stride towards e-enablement and e-Governance.
� Exhibition by leading Vendors coinciding the Conference
Bangalore, February 20, 2003: MAIT, with the support of IBM India Ltd. and Department of IT & BT, Government of Karnataka is organising a one-day National Conference on "Open Source Software: A New Direction for India?" on the 26th of February, 2003 at Hotel Leela Palace, Bangalore.
The Conference will be inaugurated by Mr. R V Deshpande, Hon'ble Minister for Large & Medium Industries, Government of Karnataka and the Keynote address and Valedictory address will be delivered by Mr. Abraham Thomas, Managing Director, IBM India and Mr. Ashok Soota, President, CII respectively.
The event would witness a Panel Discussion on "Proprietary Vs Open Source Software" where the IT Secretaries of leading States and other Govt. officials who drive the IT in their respective States will be the Panelists. To name some of them would be, Mr. Rajeev Chawla, Secretary, e-Governance, Govt. of Karnataka; Mr. Vivek Harinarain, Secretary ? IT, Govt. of Tamil Nadu, Mr. Sanjay Singh, Secretary to CM & Secretary ? IT, Govt. of Madhya Pradesh and Dr. Harbakhsh Singh, Secretary ? IT, Govt of Haryana. Mr. Vinay Deshpande, Managing Trustee, Simputer Trust will be the Moderator of this discussion.
The eminent speakers at this Conference also include Dr. Nadadur Janardhan, e-Governance Advisor & Program Integrator, DCA21; Prof. S Sadagopan, Director, IIIT Bangalore; Mr. Sandeep Menon, Linux Business Manager, IBM ASEAN/SA; Prof. D B Phatak, Head-KRSIT, IIT Mumbai; Mr. Sachin Dabir, Head Enterprise Sales, Red Hat India; Mr. Ashok Pandey, President & GM, Turbolinux Inc., Beijing, China; Mr. Frank Luksic, Country Manager, Software Group, IBM and Mr. Srikant Sundararajan, Vice President, Professional Services & CTO, HCL Infosystems Ltd.
The implementation Case Studies from prominent foreign countries and also by NIC and C-DAC will be featured at this Conference.
Coinciding the event, leading vendors like IBM, HCL, Red Hat, Netcore Solutions, Turbolinux, Altosys, etc. will be exhibiting their products.
Describing the objectives of this Conference, Mr. Venkat Kedlaya, Chairman, Southern Region, MAIT, told ? "the event is to emphasise the importance and usage of Open Source Software as a viable alternative for rapid deployment of e-Governance in Government departments and other Government owned organisations. One of the key issues in deploying Information Technology solutions to improve Governance is the need for using non-proprietary software platforms. The Government agencies in Japan, France, Germany, China and the United States are adopting Open Source Software (OSS) in a big way. Developments and advances in OSS have helped user agencies to move to Open Source. Even big companies like IBM, Sun, and HP are supporting the OSS platform.
He also said that the added benefit to Government is the ability to reduce Total Cost of Ownership when OSS is chosen. Government can now specify OSS as an alternative to proprietary software.
Mr. Abraham Thomas, Managing Director, IBM India said, "As the importance of open source grows in the marketplace, governments around the world are increasing focus on Linux. Linux brings together all the essential features for an operating system like security, flexibility, independence, reduced cost, good performance, reliability and ease of migration. The use of open computing in the Government IT infrastructure would result in improved service to the citizen. We at IBM India have undertaken various initiatives to build awareness and encourage government policy makers to understand the value open computing brings to the national IT strategy"
The conference would debate on issues and concerns like support, local language interface, stability, inter operability with legacy applications and the viability to use OSS in desk top environment.
More than 200 delegates from Central and State Government Departments/ Agencies, Public Sector Undertakings, Corporate Sector and other Users of OSS and representatives from both IT and Developer communities will be taking part in this Conference.
About MAIT: Set up in 1982 for purposes of scientific, educational and IT industry promotion, MAIT has emerged as an effective, influential and dynamic organisation. Representing hardware, training R&D and associated services sectors of the Indian IT Industry, MAIT's charter is to develop a global competitive Indian IT Industry, promote the usage of IT in India, strengthen the role of IT in national economic development and promote business through international alliances.
For more information on MAIT please visit www.mait.com
Thanks and regards, Vandana _________________________________________________________________
Vandana Rao Corporate Communications, IBM India Limited, 1st floor, Express Building, Bahadur Shah Zafar Marg, New Delhi 110 002 (INDIA) ph # 91-11-23702020 Extn: 573 fx # 91-11-23702021 E-mail: vandanar@in.ibm.com