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1November.
Rajyotsava Day in Karnataka-the state''s foundation day. A day
that the Kannadigas believe to be very auspicious. The state
under the auspice of this comportment looks forward to measures
that would bring prosperity to its fold and the day is marked
by celebrations commemorating the day. Bangalore, the once garden
city, is the silicon capital of the country today.
Nothing
more befits the state better than showcasing its strength and
potential to the whole world through a forum and celebrating.
Since 1998, the state started to showcase its strength in the
form of BangaloreIT.com. This year too, from 1 - 5 November
1999, it was IT carnival in the city, marked by several events
being held concurrently. The supposedly Asia''s largest IT event
at electronics city; a conference of secretaries of IT of state
governments sponsored by the union ministry for personnel, public
grievances, and pensions; and telecom and IT for socio-economic
benefit by KH Foundation.
BangaloreIT.com,
this year, organized by the Electronics City Industries'' Association
and managed by CyberExpo, with Karnataka as the host-state and
the US as the global partner country, was much-awaited feature
because a new government assumed office in Karnataka as well
at the centre.
Expectations
were running very high in anticipation that the Prime Minister
(PM), like during the previous year''s show, would be around
here to inaugurate the show. And with him showing keen eagerness
in promoting IT as the tool for the nation''s development, Bangalore
would have been the first and fortunate platform to hear some
new initiatives. It may be recalled that last year, it was here
that the PM had announced the date of issuance of the ISP licences.
Though a week before the show, it had become known that the
PM may not be able to make it around, the hope was that there
would be no let down to the Kannadigas'' expectations of hearing
to some new policy statements from the state government.
In fact,
the expected finally unfurled on the inaugural day, when CM
SM Krishna announced a host of sops for the promotion of IT
in the state. Primary among many of these, has been restructuring
of the IT department. The objective being to promote rapid e-governance,
establish communication backbone reaching down to taluk and
mandal headquarters, take IT to rural blocks, and ensure continuous
flow of IT investments. Among the other major initiatives have
been fiscal incentives like 100 percent exemption of entry tax
and sales tax for all IT industries; and constitution of a CM
Task Force on IT under the chairmanship of Narayan Murthy, chairman,
Infosys.
of PV Jaikrishnan, secretary, IT, GoI, calling for a vibrant
IT and his observation that the role of IT becoming even more
important with the focus now on e-commerce and e-governance
was not a mere statement. It was in fact the mood reflected
at the show. Everyone at the show was eager to talk and showcase
the products for IT-enabled services. The mood could be gauged
from the fact that this time around, top representatives of
the technoparks and secretaries of West Bengal, Maharashtra,
Kerala, and Pondicherry were present during the business hours.
While the enthusiasm of the representatives of the technoparks
could be subjected to promoting IT houses in their respective
states, the secretaries conversed about IT-iazation of society
and their states.
E-commerce,
Internet Rule the Roost
At the outset, the exhibition may have appeared to be an IT
exhibition. But a look at the pavilions and the demos clearly
revealed that there was a common thread-that of enterprise networking
and the role of Internet in tomorrow''s businesses. There were
a total of 10 pavilions housing close to 300 IT companies alone.
The comprehensiveness of the representation could be easily
assessed from the nature of focused-pavilions. These included
the US, STPI, e-commerce, ERP, home, training, Linux, infrastructure,
and software solutions. But most targeted e-commerce.
For many
companies, the objective was to increase visibility and highlight
their products and services. And as to business at the spot,
the multi-media CDs definitely were the hot sellers, while for
many others good business leads were the deal. A record number
of 3.5 lakh people are estimated to have visited the show. Though
there was dampness before the start of the show owing to the
hangover left over from the chaos and congestion prevailed in
the previous year, when the show took off, the enthusiasm and
zealot was on overdrive, despite having to travel 15 km outside
the city mains. Many visitors and exhibitors had a similar feedback:
good organization, facilities, and orderliness. Most of them
had one distinct comment, appreciating the need for organizing
the show in an area spread over 20,000 sq. m, scheduling different
slots for the business and general visitors, and most distinct
feature of having "theme" pavilions, as this had the
visitors'' objectives easily met.
Importantly,
the success of any technology exhibition is incomplete without
that technology actually being used for such that event. And
all the companies, which had played some or the other role in
providing the necessary support, were delighted about the capabilities.
While Network Solutions did the networking and provided the
networking equipment, Loral Orion provided the Internet bandwidth
by linking STPI. BNA had done up the entire cabling work with
the help of Krone. The feast was definitely the registration
process, which was a live demo of thin-client technology being
used (40 nodes connected to the server), which was arranged
by VXL instruments.
Mange More
Though the show is being claimed to be one of the largest ones
in Asia, it had more of a south Indian flavour with the majority
of the crowds coming from the southern part of the country.
To make it a truly mega national event, more companies from
other parts have to participate. It may take some time for that
to happen. When the exhibitors were contacted to find out if
they would be participating next year also, close to 85 percent
of them replied in the affirmative.
The importance
of the show was probably best highlighted by Richard Celeste,
the US ambassador, in his opening remarks. He described Karnataka
as the corner stone of India''s silicon triangle and praised
it as a state very willing to be wired. A leader in space and
cyber space. He shared his thoughts on two challenges that were
prudent for governments to cultivate growth and development
and make India a global power-the E-challenge and the X-challenge.
The E-challenge, he said, was a challenge to e-imagination,
where the only limits would be imagination and education. X-challenge,
was the challenge of execution-execution of e-people and execution
of IT to public task. And the mantra for e-commerce: provide
access and bandwidth and have patience in tax policies. Simple
words to make business and economic development for the country
simple!