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Preeti Pandey

Microsoft is pushing the adoption of its .NET technology which promises to keep you connected - even during traffic jams.

IMAGINE getting stuck in traffic and not being able to re-schedule that important appointment. Now if only your mobile device (PDA or the cellular phone) could automatically `talk' to the device of the other person and reschedule the appointment at a time convenient to both of you. Well, not to worry, this is what mobile vendors are working on these days wherein, by incorporating `intelligent' software into the device, communication between two unconnected sources takes place, enabling an almost human interface.

Microsoft's .NET technology allows such connectivity, enabling a high level of software integration through the use of Web services. The .NET architecture is a set of Microsoft software technologies that connects information, people, systems, and devices.

Introduced three years ago, the .NET movement is fast gaining acceptance worldwide, including in India, and according to Microsoft officials, India is in the forefront of the .NET adoption. "We have over 1.5 lakh Indian developers working on the .NET platform and over 240 .NET-related offshore projects. However, India lacks software architects and Microsoft is working with enterprises to create software architects," says Dilip Mistry, Director, .NET and Developer Evangelism, Microsoft Corporation India Pvt Ltd.

And the enterprise segment is where Microsoft is pushing the development of .NET applications and their implementation. The company is presently working on 35 projects in the enterprise-customer segment. "Indian enterprises need to stop thinking of a one-point system, especially given the budget constraints they face," says Mistry.

According to Homi Bharda, Lead Enterprise Evangelist, Microsoft Corporation India, the return on investment, through .NET, is visible in a three-to-six-month time-span. Already several .NET implementations have gone live, with the latest being the Bharat Petroleum Corporation Ltd project.

BPCL project

BPCL has used .NET to improve employee productivity and improve administrative efficiency. An Online Estate (administration) Services System was developed to help BPCL's refinery administration improve its responsiveness, the speed of providing estate services, (accommodation for employees), increase asset utilisation and minimise wastage of financial resources. For instance, it de-leased a total of 175 residential flats all over India in 2002-03, acting upon data from the system on rent paid on unoccupied flats during the year.

The company also saw an increase of 65 per cent in staff productivity of the travel department. This department was able to reduce the time taken to process bills raised by travel agencies from around threee weeks in the previous manual system, to one week with the travel application module of Intralink.

BPCL also utilised .NET to extend the functionality of its Laboratory Information Management System (LIMS) and provide a browser-based interface to the system. Information from the LIMS, ERP and plant process information system is connected, allowing users to have secure access to the system, from any desktop system connected to the Intranet. The productivity of users increased by 40-50 per cent, according to the company. "The centralised data availability has helped the BPCL administration to be more productive and exercise greater cost control," says S. Prakash, Senior Manager, HRS (W), BPCL.

Essentially, Web services used in the .NET technology are small, discrete, building-block applications that connect to each other as well as to other, larger applications over the Internet. The reusable applications are written in XML (extended mark-up language), a universal language for data exchange. Web services allows data to be communicated across the Internet (or internal intranet) between otherwise unconnected sources.

Microsoft is working with universities and research departments, enterprises and various State Governments to create `a .NET ecosystem.' Some upcoming projects set to go live include a national train enquiry system of the Indian Railways where customers can get `arrival and departure' details in real time, Bharda says. Project Basha, in collaboration with the Indian Government and universities to accelerate the development of local-language Web services, is also under way. The company is also in talks with several state governments to use the .NET platform for e-governance projects, he says.

preetim@thehindu.co.in

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