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A Staff Reporter in Bombay

Novell Chairman and CEO Dr Eric Schmidt today announced in Bombay the setting up of a 'Novell Institute for Networking Technology' near Pune in Maharashtra. He also announced a corpus of Rs 10 million with an aim to encourage Indian software talent.

A memorandum of understanding regarding the institute was signed between Novell's Asia-Pacific Vice-President Keith C Osborne and Maharashtra Industries Secretary Y S Bhave. Maharashtra Chief Minister Manohar Joshi, Schmidt, Industries Minister Liladhar Dake and State Chief Secretary P Subrahmanyam were present at the signing ceremony.

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The Maharashtra government is promoting in Pune an institute of higher education in the field of information technology. The proposed institute will be called the Indian Institute of Software Engineering, Pune, or IISE.

The Novell Institute for Networking Technology, dubbed NINT, would be a part of the IISE.

Novell has defined NINT as India's premier school for education in the broad area of Novell networking and related products. It is the company's aspiration that the institution becomes India's and South Asia's leading competency centre of system and networking engineering skills.

The IISE itself would be in affiliation with the Computer Science School of Carnegie Mellon University, US.

The institute would conduct courses offering Certified Novell Engineer, Certified Novell Administrator and Certified Internet Professional qualifications to undergraduate, graduate and post-graduate students. It would also conduct refresher courses for software development.

Later in the day Schmidt addressed the National Association for Software and Service Companies' Industry Leadership Summit.

On the occasion, Dr Schmidt, in association with Onward Novell Software (India) Limited, announced a corpus of Rs 10 million to encourage Indian software talent.

The corpus would fuel a 'Novell Developers' Contest'. The contest would be open to both individuals and business organisations and would run for one year beginning November 1, 1998.

All contestants have to develop an application using Java, C or any scripting language that runs on NetWare 5, Novell's latest offering and the NDS, Novell Directory Services.

The National Centre for Software Technology, the country's leading information technology academic institute, will assist Onward Novell in managing the logistics and monitoring of this contest.

The Software application developed by contestants' needs to leverage the NetWare 5 platform or NDS and meet Novell's contest certification requirements. Besides developing one's ticket to the future of networking, the winning application could gain co-marketing and promotional opportunities with Novell, access to Novell's sales channel, valuable prizes and consideration for venture capital directly from Novell.

The Novell Developers' Contest will award grand prizes for the best Intelligent Network Server Platform Application.

Outlining the technology map for Novell in the coming years, Dr Schmidt said, Novell has always been a technology-rich company and applying this technology for the convenience of our customers is our focus area for the future.

"The NINT, along with the Novell Developer's Contest, in association with the India joint venture Onward Novell Software, further reaffirms our strong commitment to the Indian subcontinent. We believe that Indian software talent especially at the research and development centre at Bangalore has made a profound and significant contribution in global performance," Dr Schmidt said.

Novell has since its inception already invested Rs 600 million in India towards the setting up of the joint venture company, Onward Novell Software India Ltd. The research and development centre at Bangalore is Novell's largest outside of the United States.

The additional Rs 400 million would be invested in education and training, building network infrastructure, research and development and various customer focussed programmes.

Nandu Pradhan, vice-president, Onward Novell said "It is our endeavour to promote Indian software talent and this contest will provide the opportunity to Indian software developers with an appropriate platform to acquire international recognition."

Dr S Ramani, director, NCST said, "Software design and development capabilities of Indian companies should be better understood by the world. While the capabilities are second to none in the world, we do have to improve our working environment to make it possible for young professionals to do their best on the Indian soil and earn a worldwide reputation. The awards will go a long way in fostering excellence. NCST will do everything to maintain the highest standards in selecting awardees."

Novell already has significant investment in India in the form of its joint venture with Onward Novell Software and a full-fledged research and development centre at Bangalore.

Novell in Bangalore is playing a critical role in Novell Inc's global product plans through the development of critical current and future technologies.

It owns the complete engineering responsibility for several critical products like NDS for Solaris, developer tools for NetWare 5, ActiveX Controls, ManageWise components and several others.

Novell has already invested $15 million in the country and almost 15 per cent of its worldwide R&D activity is done in India.

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