Date:22/10/2007 URL: http://www.thehindubusinessline.com/2007/10/22/stories/2007102251430200.htm

Back ‘Quantum effect’ looks promising for ‘Cyderabad’

Next week’s expo will tell if Bangalore breeze will blow again

Anand Parthasarathy

Still the best : (From left)Quantum Corp’s India-based Channel Sales Director, Mr Sunny John; the Asia-Pacific Marketing Director, Mr Jim Simon; the US-based Vice-President, Mr Brad Cohen; the Chairman/CEO, Mr Richard Belluzzo; and the India Country Manager, Mr Sanjay Kumar Dutta, in Bangalore. –

Anand Parthasarathy

Bangalore, Oct. 21 A day after US-based storage solutions major, Quantum Corp, opened an India-based research and development centre in Hyderabad last week, the cream of its American, Asian and Indian management teams, led by Chairman and Chief Executive Mr Rick Belluzzo, was in Bangalore.

India’s so-called ‘Silicon City’ has been a necessary ‘pit stop’ on the ‘Formula One’ tech circuit of almost every visiting international corporate leader but a small, yet subtle difference is emerging.

The Karnataka capital remains the biggest concentration of information technology companies in India, and therefore the best place to do business with technology-driven industry. But its role as the nation’s best address to find-and-hold the brains behind the business, is increasingly challenged by what is now routinely called ‘Cyberabad’.

Quantum’s Hyderabad Development Centre was opened just one day after Mr John Swainson, CEO of the enterprise management software player CA (formerly known as Computer Associates), inaugurated the new home of his company’s largest technology centre on the outskirts of the same city. India is home for one of every three developers, working with the Islandia (NewYork)-based company.

Common software

Mr Belluzzo told Business Line that its Hyderabad-based team, led by Mr Ravi Kollipara, would help create solutions for a common software plaform that will help Quantum customers seamlessly run both tape and disk-based storage products across the same hardware platform.

According to analysts, the company has strengthened its portfolio to take a leadership position in the technology of Data De Duplication — stripping away duplicate attachments to shrink the volume of data to be stored and archived.

A subtext in this recent ‘Cyberabad-chalo’ trend is the IT industry’s frustrations in infrastructurally-challenged Bangalore, for many years now. The spell of President’s Rule in Karnataka makes firm Government planning uncertain in the short term. For an industry that works at ‘Internet time’, waiting is not an option — and Hyderabad may remain the gainer, for now.

Positive on Bangalore

However, Karnataka’s official IT interfaces, that soldier on across Government changes, remain confident that the State can still make the global industry a Godfather-like “offer it can’t refuse”, based on the formidable technology ecosystem that already exists here.

The first opportunity to test this confidence, that the breeze may blow Bangalore’s way again, is just one week away — when the annual Bangalore IT.in event opens on October 29, in its new home at the International Exhibition Centre on the outskirts of the city.