MUMBAI, OCT 8: The Maharashtra government today signed a memorandum of understanding with Onward Novell Technologies (India) Ltd for setting up an institute of networking technology at Pune. Onward Novell is the Indian joint venture of Novell, the fifth largest software company in the world.The Novell Institute of Networking Technologies will be part of the Indian Institute of Software Engineering being set up in Pune in affiliation with the US-based Carnegie Mellon University on 5,000 sq ft.Announcing the MoU, the chief minister, Manohar Joshi said the government was developing Pune as a cybercity. The reduced sales tax on computer hardware (two per cent), packaged software (one per cent) and customised software (nil) would come into effect soon, he said.Novell chairman and CEO, Eric Schmidt, announced a corpus of Rs 1 crore to encourage Indian software industry. The company will also increase its investment in India from Rs 60 crore to Rs 100 crore by 2000. Part of this will be used to fund thenetworking institute and the rest will be used to expand its R&D centre in Bangalore. Unlike a number of US companies which use India for low-level software like testing, Novell's R&D centre is used to develop core products, Schmdit said. In fact, chunks of Novell's newest network operating system, Netware 5, was developed in India. Netware 5 has been critically acclaimed for its upgraded internet support and pure TCP/IP (a type of internet protocol) support.Schmidt who engineered Novell's turnaround was also responsible for developing Java, the platform independent programming language developed by Sun Microsystems.Schmidt, who also spoke at Industry Leaders' Summit organised by the National Association of Software and Service Companies (Nasscom), said the Indian software industry had a certain buzz to it and was well-known in the US. Though it was being mostly used for sourcing low-level software, the scenario could change with high PC penetration and internet connectivity, especially inuniversities, he added. Big names like Baan and Oracle had already set up development centres here to tap the considerable software talent.Dewang Mehta, executive director of Nasscom, said 158 of the Fortune 500 companies sourced their software from India. The IT policy of government would remove any bottlenecks and take India from the Information Sidewalk to the Information Superhighway, he said. Schmidt, who is recognised as an internet pioneer, later spoke at an Internet Users Committee of India (IUCI) meeting on the future of the internet. "The good news is that everything is on the net. But you can't find anything," he said. The second wave in computing would be about finding information and establishing identities on the internet, he added.
