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Highlighting the eminence of IT in the
state of Orissa, the IT Association of Orissa (ITAO) hosted the
state's first
Conclave on March 5 in Bhubaneswar, followed by
ITAO Awards 2010 the next day. The
DQ Week was the exclusive IT media partner for the event.
The event was supported by Orissa Computer Application Center (OCAC),
the state's nodal agency and Compass, the largest IT association of
East India.
About 150 channel players across the
state converged in the state capital to participate in the
conference, in which the association discussed potential
opportunities of IT in the state. The event saw series of
presentations from the sponsors and other members of the IT
fraternity. Talking about the reasons for holding the conclave, Manoj
Lalani, President, ITAO, said, “We came up with the idea of this
conference as we wanted to do something unique in the channel space.
Expos are definitely an option but we wanted to do something
different for the channel partners across the state.” Dayanand
Ratho, Secretary, ITAO, said, “Channel partners from Bhubaneswar,
Cuttack, Jeypore, Rourkela and Sambalpur gathered to witness the
first IT Conclave in the state. The conclave enabled us to
highlighted the tremendous growth of IT in the state.”
The event was conducted in two
phases-Customer Summit and Channel Summit on two separate days. In
the Customer Summit, the program touched upon the growth and
opportunities in the state from an end-user perspective. The Channel
Summit was directed towards the channel business in the state and
explored the growth potentials from a channel perspective.
The event kick started with Manohar
Malani, CEO, NCS Computech discussing the needs for security
solutions in the SMB and SME segments, apart from elaborating on
futuristic trends in security solutions space. Malani further
educated the partners on the subjects of spamming and phishing. “We
opted for holding the event in two phases, primarily due to two
factors. Firstly, we wanted to provide customers with a platform to
interact directly with vendors and channel partners. Secondly, as
most vendors were keen on expanding in the Orissa upcountry markets,
we decided to provided them with a dais to directly interact with
the upcountry channel players at a single venue,” Ratho added.
The event saw presentations from IBM,
HP, Canon, Western Digital, D-Link, Microsoft, LG, and BSNL, who
elaborated on their channel plans. Subrat Kumar Prustey,
DGM-Enterprise, BSNL said, “ITAO can act as a catalyst to
facilitate PC retailers and channel partners to sell BSNL products as
direct selling agents (DSAs). Out target for this year is to expand
across Orissa and we hope to appoint around 18,000 DSAs.”
Similarly, Canon, LG, Western Digital and IBM showed a keen interest
to increase their channel bases and spread across class-C and D
cities. Speaking about Canon's channel plans in Orissa, Ratneshwar
Jha, Senior Territory Manager-Bhubaneswar and Jharkhand, Canon,
said, “In 2009, we had a sales growth of 27 percent, of which
Orissa contributed 34 percent of the national growth. Our revenue was
at Rs 840 crore in FY 09-10 and now, for this FY, we are targeting to
garner more than Rs 1,000 crore. We hope that Orissa will contribute
significantly to that growth target.”
IT Conclave was previously postponed.