Software firms target SMEs

Information technology (IT) firms are now focusing on small and medium industrial units. As software deployment trickles down to the tier-2 and tier-3 towns, IT firms are now customising solutions to cater to small and medium enterprises (SMEs) to keep up the growth momentum.

One of the earliest patron of information technology was the banking, financial services and insurance sector (BFSI).

According to Dataquest Research, at Rs 10,543 crore in 2004-05, BFSI is the most lucrative vertical accounting for nearly a quarter of the domestic industry spend on IT. Most of the large banks have already completed their core banking deployments.

"Vendors like us are seeing a huge potential in the Indian cooperative banking sector," says Sanjay Kharade, principal consultant, Cisco Systems (India and Saarc).

Though a part of the deployment of IT solutions by smaller banks is attributable to peer pressure.

Kharade said, "Since most of the large banks have completed their core banking deployments, the cooperative banks are feeling the pressure to deploy IT solutions."

Cisco has introduced scaled down solutions which can cater to the individual or total solutions requirements of connectivity, internet protocol (IP) telephony which includes Voice over IP (VoIP), mail and internal phone requirements and switching capability.

With customers such as State Bank of India, Bank of Boroda, ICICI and IDBI to name a few, Cisco recently signed on its first cooperative banking customer, the Pune-headquartered Cosmos Cooperative Bank.