The Hindu Business Line : Collabnet eyes domestic market

COLLABNET Software, the research and development centre of the US-based Collabnet Inc, plans to expand its Indian operations based out of Chennai and consolidate its product and tools that help outsourcing companies.

The Chief Technology Officer of Collabnet, Mr Brian Behlendorf, who is associated with the open source movement and is Director of the Apache Foundation, said that the company, which currently employs 150 people (60 of them in India), plans to ramp up Indian operations to meet its domestic and global requirements for product development work.

Mr Behlendorf was in India to hold talks with some Indian technology and MNC companies and lecture at the International Institute of Information Technology here.

Collabnet, which acquired the Chennai-based Enlite two years ago, has a client list that includes Sun Micro, HP, Motorola, and Intel, along with several other corporations engaged in financial services. "Having about 60 resources in Chennai, we now plan to add another 30 people here shortly."

The open source software has gathered momentum and several Government projects are being handled with this approach.

"This makes replication of a successful project swift and easy. Open source code is not running out of steam and Microsoft will have to run harder now."

Major corporations like IBM and Oracle supporting open source and TCS and others hosting separate development teams is a vindication of the growth of the open source software, he said.