The Hindu Business Line : Red Hat to unveil Linux in 13 Indian languages by March 2006

BULLISH on the market potential of Linux in India, Red Hat has said it plans to localise its offerings in 13 Indian languages by March 2006 and ramp-up its localisation headcount in the country to 100 professionals.

"Getting the local language interface is the first step for penetrating the market. We already have Red Hat Enterprise Linux beta version in five languages including Hindi, Bengali, Tamil and Gujarati, which will be commercially released in February 2005. In the next 15 months, we will localise our products in eight more languages including Telugu, Kannada, Malayalam and Oriya," said Mr Javed Tapia, Director - India, Red Hat India, on the sidelines of an international summit on localisation organised by Manufacturers' Association for IT (MAIT) here.

He said currently 12 Red Hat professionals were involved in localisation activities and this number will be scaled-up to 100 in 15 months.

Commenting on the thrust for localisation, Mr Tapia said, "In a country of one billion people, the PC penetration is extremely low, and only three million computers are being sold every year. While one of the ways of increasing PC penetration is to bring down the cost of the computer, we also need to focus heavily on localisation initiatives."

"For Red Hat, localisation involves not just localisation of the operating system but also three major applications - open office, e-mail client, and Web browser - to offer a complete user experience," he added.

Red Hat currently is working with 30-35 independent software vendors in India. Its major OEM (original equipment manufacturer) partners include HCL Infosystems, IBM, Wipro, Acer and PCS, Mr Tapia said adding that the cost of a Linux desktop offering ranged between Rs 500 and Rs 1,000.

Mr Tapia said the company was more than bullish on India as it was the fastest growing market for Red Hat in Asia Pacific outside Japan.