Ramco Systems Ltd, the Chennai-based information technology company, will sustain a growth rate of nearly 25 per cent in the current year – a similar performance of last year. However, there could be some margin pressure as the company will invest in research and development, and marketing initiatives, according to the company's Vice-Chairman, Managing Director and CEO, Mr P.R. Venketrama Raja.
Ramco's global income in the financial year 2010-2011 was $47.41 million with India contributing 36 per cent of it, followed by the US with 23 per cent and the balance from rest of the world.
“We are adding nearly 40 customers every quarter,” he told newspersons on the launch of the company's OnDemand analytics and Gateway products ‘on the cloud' – accessing data or software via a computer network (Internet) rather than from a local computer.
Mr Raja said Ramco has so far spent nearly $200 million on product development especially on the delivery platform – Ramco VirtualWorks and Ramco DecisionWorks. Even the new products launched today are based on this platform, he said.
Focus on cloud
Mr Kamesh Ramamoorthy, Chief Operating Officer, Ramco Systems, said he expects revenue from ‘public cloud' – wherein the infrastructure is made available to the public or a large industry group and is owned by a company selling cloud services – for Ramco increasing by nearly ten times to $100 million in the next five years.
Similarly, revenue from private cloud – infrastructure is operated solely for a company – could increase to nearly $100 million from $35 million in five years. Nearly 3,000 users are using Ramco's products on the Cloud, and the company hopes the number will reach 7,000 in the next 12 months. Clients see nearly 50 per cent saving by moving in to the Cloud versus the conventional ERP (Enterprise resource planning) software, he said.
New products
Ramco OnDemand Analytics is a pre-configured analytics on the Cloud, and customers can go live immediately – as against five to six months in the conventional solution. The product can be integrated with any ERP and offer top management a single dashboard view of the company's performance. Through data mining, the product facilitates business performance monitoring, decision support and strategy formulation for a company, he said.
The Ramco OnDemand Gateway product enables a company to first adopt business applications, and then graduate to a full-fledged ERP without replacing the existing system. The product offers a fusion of transaction and decision support system, he said.
Mr Raja said it could cost a company around Rs 8,000 per user per month for the new product on the Cloud. The benefits are that a client need not invest on capex; there is no licensing fee or maintenance fee; clients can pay-per-user, he said.