Corrections or additions?
This article by Barbara Fox was prepared for the July 25, 2001
edition of U.S. 1
Newspaper. All rights reserved.
Ramco’s Interchangeable Blocks
If the software industry had a Holy Grail, it might
be the method for writing code in interchangeable airtight blocks.
Take away one building block, fix it, and put it back — and
guarantee
to do that without affecting the rest of the program. It’s called
"componentization." If you can structure the components of
a software program in this way, so the thinking goes, you can turn
on a dime to react to business change.
"In a climate of mergers and spinoffs, that is the biggest
challenge
for any IT company, to be able to change the business processes as
the company reinvents itself," says Parameswar Subramanian, head
of U.S. operations for Ramco Systems Corp. He believes
RamcoVirtualWorks
(RVM), can do this componentization. It has workbenches for capturing
the business processes of a company and developing applications.
Ramco Systems Corporation has relocated its 50-person United States
headquarters to 6,000 square feet at Crossroads Corporate Center.
It does software package development and sales for enterprise planning
and asset management solutions. Together with regional offices in
Connecticut, Chicago, Texas, and California, there are 175 employees
in North America. More than 1,500 employees operate in North America,
Europe, and Asia. It works in such areas as enterprise resource
planning,
E-asset management, and human resource management, and it provides
services in consulting, network security, real-time solutions, and
implementing customer relationship management products.
Subramanian points with pride to Ramco’s partnership with Boeing,
which will use RVW to develop Enterprise 1 aircraft maintenance
software.
"We will help them develop, implement, and maintain it while they
take care of the marketing and the branding, and we hope to do this
in several other industry segments," he says. "The service
revenue accrues to us."
Ramco’s 600-pound gorilla competitor is SAP, based in Germany but
with many offices in the United States. "In terms of the
technology
I feel we are more nimble," Subramanian says. He points out that
Ramco’s offshore software development in India is more cost effective.
"The bigger you get," he says, "the less you are working
from the user’s perspective. We try to find what the user wants. We
have the ability to take your business logic and translate that into
software. If you want to sell our product to your customers in your
industry, we will develop and maintain the software while you sell
it."
Ramco Systems Corp. belongs to the Ramco Group, a $300 million
conglomerate
that was founded in 1938 as a textile company and now manufactures
surgical cotton and cement as well. Until 1993 Ramco Systems had been
the IT division of the conglomerate and is now a $15 million
stand-alone
company. Ramco is located in India in Chennai (pronounced
"chen-eye"
meaning "a beautiful coastline"), also known by its British
name, Madras.
In addition to clients in the aviation industry, Ramco serves the
process industries (such as Sunkist), fleet maintenance (helicopters),
breweries, and agriculture. It also provides service solutions for
dotcom companies, AT&T, and Lucent Technologies. Its flagship product
is Ramco E-applications.
Subramanian, who prefers to be known as "Param,"
is an engineering graduate of Madras University, Class of 1977, and
has a master’s in management degree from Xavier Institute in northern
India. He came to this office in April. He and his wife, who has not
yet moved to Lawrenceville, have a 15-year-old daughter and an
11-year-old
son.
Subrata Kar, the director of marketing services, grew up in Calcutta
and majored in computer science at the University of London, Class
of 1986. He had most recently worked in Chennai. He and his wife live
in Plainsboro and have a school-age son.
"RVW is more than a toolset," says Kar. As a platform with
its own architecture RVW gives software developers a framework to
design and build business components and integrate them into an
enterprise
system — all in real time. What makes this different from other
products, says Kar, is that it has a built-in software development
methodology. "With its automation, it will reduce time to
market."
For instance, a sales application involves processing orders,
shipping,
invoicing, pricing, and managing customers. The goal is to develop
and integrate each of these components without making changes in the
overall program. "Our current enterprise resource planning
product,
to be completely Internet-enabled, will be based on RamcoVirtualWorks,
and we can also develop customized applications using the same
workbench,"
says Kar.
"In a typical IT environment, there is no documentation available
and people are afraid to change a program," says Subramanian.
"But given a choice, companies might like to migrate an
application
to a new technology. Anybody can do web enabling but we do one step
further. With VirtualWorks, it is possible to have the legacy
application
on one side and new applications on the other, and work in integrated
fashion, allowing the customer to migrate to a new technology."
"First we web-enable the existing application," says
Subramanian.
"Then we integrate it with other applications and do the data
transfer. Then we migrate the application on the main frame to a newer
technology."
"The concept of componentization is nothing new," he says,
"and a lot of people have tried it, but it is a moving target.
The tools available to use it have never been there."
— Barbara Fox
100, Crossroads Corporate Center, Lawrenceville 08648. Kamesh
Ramamoorthy,
president. 609-620-4800; fax, 609-620-4860. Home page:
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