SoftPro sets up US subsidiary

SoftPro Systems has set up SoftPro Technologies, a fully owned subsidiary in US, that will focus on open source and Linux technologies. The US arm will increase its head count to 100 from the existing 25 by the year-end.

"Many independent software vendors (ISV) have started adopting open source technologies and making their products available on Linux platform in the past 18 months," Venkata Rao Mallineni, the CEO of SoftPro, said here today.

"We will focus on building Smart Source, a collaborative platform, to enable enterprise development process using open source technologies, and Smart Support to automate the support processes of an organisation," Rao said.

As per the Forrester report, 72 per cent of the global organisations are expected to use Linux or any other open source system in 2004, he said.

"Our short-term strategy is to provide support and migration services, while in the medium-term we will depend upon our own platforms like Smart Source and Smart Support to position ourselves against the big competitors. In the long-term, we will develop advanced technologies in the areas of Clustering, Grid Computing and embedded technologies," Rao said.

According to Shashank Vaidya, a consultant, SoftPro is in talks with a few investors to get the required investments into the subsidiary.

The company estimates an investment requirement upto Rs 10 crore during the next two to three years. The subsidiary will primarily focus on the US, Europe and Asia-Pacific markets.