Tux Watch

Part- 3. India Plays “IT” Open

India has been very prominent on the FOSS world news bulletins due to the fact that with one of the largest populations in the world, the country has been on preference list for Information Technology and Software Business Process Outsourcing for the western or developed world. Adding to this, almost every major FOSS development corporation has either Research and Development center in India as well as country operations including giant brand names like Red Hat, Novell, IBM etc. In India, the Center for Development of Advanced Computing (C-DAC) [here ] has been leading FOSS initiatives in the country.

C-DAC’s National Resource Centre for Free/Open Source Software (NRCFOSS) is funded by the Department of Information Technology (DIT), Ministry of Communication and Information Technology (MCIT), Govt. of India, and is being managed jointly by the Chennai division of the C-DAC and AU-KBC Research Centre, Anna University,Chennai.C-DAC is an Autonomous Scientific Society of the DIT, Govt. of India and AU-KBC Research Centre is an Autonomous Research Centre of the Anna University.

NRCFOSS is contributing to FOSS promotion in India. It addresses issues related to FOSS in the Indian context and to explore how FOSS can play the twin roles of helping to bridge the digital divide as well as develop the ecosystem for the Indian software industry to address the needs of a variety of users. It carries out various activities related to Research and Development, HR Development, Networking and Entrepreneur ship Development, as well as serve as the reference point for all FOSS related activities in India. It also maintains a national FOSS Portal [here]. The center has been developing various FOSS applications including a Localized Linux Distribution in Indian Languages as well as the Open Office Indian Language version.

C-DAC has developed five FOSS products [here], including a directory of FOSS projects, a network security tool, and a supply chain management solution for SMBs. These products are:

1. Bharat Operating Systems Solutions (BOSS)
2. Network@Guard Enterprise Edition
3. Area Traffic Control System (ATCS)
4. e-SAVYA
5. Bangla-Assamese-Manipuri Speech Corpora.

Bharat Operating Systems Solutions (BOSS)
Linux is an Indian distribution of GNU/Linux based on the Debian consisting of the Linux kernel, Open Office application suite BharateeyaOO, Internet web browser, email, chat, file sharing, Multimedia applications software etc. The desktop environment and applications have been localized to enable the use of Indian languages and is targeted at the government users, kiosks, SMEs, and general users. BOSS is enabling Indians, most of whom are not English-literate, to be exposed to widespread computing in local or regional languages. A BOSS development repository is being prepared and this should make it easier for other developers to build other specialized Linux distributions based on BOSS Linux.

The availability of BOSS Linux will have a positive impact on the digital divide in India as more people can now have access to software in their local language to use the Internet and other information and communications technology (ICT) facilities. Community Information centers (CIC’s), and Internet cafes will benefit from BOSS Linux too as this software can be utilized to power these outlets and it is affordable and easy to install, use and support.

e-Saral Vyapar Suvidha
e-SAVYA or “e-Saral Vyapar Suvidha� is an “Affordable Supply Chain Management System for the SME Sector� to enable greater coordination and collaboration among their supply chain partners. e-SAVYA addresses issues related to the proliferation of product variety coupled with the shortening of the product life cycles is compelling companies to re-examine their business strategies. The tool has a host of components that include inventory management, sales, procurement, shipping and receiving and user management and has been designed as a web-based solution to facilitate the automation of processes SME Industries to improve their operational efficiency.

e-SAVYA can also be easily integrated to the open source components (accounts, workflow) customized by IIIT, Hyderabad. The tool has been implemented for both Windows and Linux, and is database independent offering a low cost of ownership for the SME sector. e-SAVYA is supported by Industrial Applications Division, Department of Information Technology, Ministry of Communications and Information Technology, Government of India.

Area Traffic Control System (ATCS)
ATCS is a fully adaptive road traffic control system that uses data from vehicle detectors and optimizes traffic signal settings in an area to reduce vehicle delays and stops. The control system will operate in real time with the capacity to calculate the optimal cycle times, effective green time ratios, and change intervals for all system traffic signal controllers connected to it. It has been introduced in the city of Pune since Feb 2006 and has been handling 38 junctions.

Network at Guard: Enterprise Security Solution
N@G-ESS addresses the issues of securing end systems and the E-Intrusion Detection System (E-IDS) focuses on the reduction of false alarms and is build on top of the N@G to develop the enterprise wide IDS. The system is based on a distributed architecture, which includes data collector, analyzer and sensor entities for addressing salability issues. It packs various components such as Threat Profiling, Alert Fusion, Event and Alert Correlation and Incidence Analysis. The product is available as a RPM and is pre-packaged with solutions for hardening the OS prior to installation.

Speech Technology
C-DAC’s Speech Corpora is a collection of Annotated Speech Corpora for Bangla, Assamese and Manipuri. The annotated speech corpora gains importance as the development of Speech Technology and Acoustic Phonetics Research of different languages demands large speech databases.

C-DAC has also developed various other products such as:

1. Telemedicine
2. Health Information system
3. e-learning solutions
4. Wheel chair for the handicapped
5. Bioinformatics portal
6. India Development Gateway

C-DAC has centres in Chennai, Bangalore, Hyderabad, Mumbai, Mohali, Noida, Pune and Thiruvananthapuram.