Artech releases Akshar Naveen on Linux, seeks SI partnerships

Artech Infosystems (erst­while Sof­tek) is seeking
tie-ups with systems integrators to further its reach among government and
industrial sectors. Said Yogendra Tripathi, Country Head and Senior VP, Artech
India, “Since Akshar Naveen is a very niche product, we will join forces only
with those SIs who have a strong hold in the government sec­tor. This will lend
the much-needed thrush to our product.” 

The company first unveiled Akshar Naveen office suite in
four Indian languages - Hindi, Bangla, Punjabi and Gujarati, in July last year.
It has received good acceptance among government institutions, which rely on
native and bilingual language compu­ting. With the computeri­zation of
government offices, especially since e-governance is happening in full swing,
this vertical has emerged as the prominent purchaser IT products. “We want to
tap this expanding vertical through the concerted efforts of our marketing team
and SI partners,” Tripathi added.

It is noteworthy that Artech has earlier taken on board
reseller partners to market Akshar Naveen but the relationship has not proved
beneficial for the vendor. Giving a judicious reply on this fact Harinder Singh,
Senior Manager-Products and Com­mu­nica­tions quipped, “Basi­cally Akshar
Naveen is not a push product that would require box pushing agents. Still we
have been able to get encou­raging business thro­ugh reseller partners that we
appointed last year. But as per the figures gathered on direct versus channel
business, we have reworked our channel sales policy.”

In addition to
channel appointments, Artech is equally bullish over insti­tuting relationships
with hardware vendors, who can bundle Akshar Naveen with their hardware
offerings. “The urge to migrate Akshar Naveen on Linux has emerged from the
OS' widespread popularity. Almost 25 - 30 percent of our customers have
migrated to Linux, which is a large base,” informed Tripathi.

Rajeev Malik, Chief Techno­logy Officer at Artech India
informed, “Though Naveen will now come on Linux platform along with Windows
version of it, we are not making our product free of charge. The objective
behind transferring it to Linux is to facilitate multilingual compu­ting for
Linux custo­mers as well.”

DQC News Bureau New Delhi, March 8