Pentium to raise funds
Pentium Infotech Ltd is negotiating with a couple of venture capital funds to raise funds. Talks are also on with a US-based investment group to enter into an alliance. The company recently set up a research and development centre in Ahmedabad.

IT Kids opens shop at Mangalore
Chennai-based IT Kids, an IT training firm for children between 4 and 14 years, opened its centre at Mangalore on Sunday. Among the host of courses to be offered by the centre are Young Adventurer, Young Doctor and Young Artist divided into age appropriate modules. On the launch of the centre, V Suresh Kumar, director, IT Kids, said that the company hopes to open around 10 centres in and around Mangalore, Manipal, Udupi and Coorg in about a year, said a company release.

CTS bags QAI award
Cognizant Technology Solutions (CTS) Corporation, an e-business and application management solutions company, has been awarded the `best of best practices award' by Quality Assurance of India (QAI) and the Centre for Informations Systems Engineering of Carnegie Mellon, USA.

Bantry Bay invests $7 m in JP Systems
Bantry Bay, a US-based Venture Fund has invested $7 million in JP Systems Inc, a four-year-old Dallas-based software company, promoted by NRIs and specialising in wireless application services. A portion of the funds has reportedly been earmarked for the company's expansion in Europe and Asia.

Compex launches two dual-speed ethernet switches
Compex Systems Pte Ltd has launched has launched two new dual-speed fast ethernet switches. The SXP1216WM and the SXP1224WM switches enables Web management together with port trunking and VLAN capabilities. The switches have been developed in a manner to support the Internet IT manager.

Available with a Web-based management application that allows users to access it via any popular Web browser (Internet Explorer. Navigator) through its management port, the switches have a backplane capacity of 4.8Gps, the SXP1216/24WM can link users over a distance of 2km.

Karnataka Bank in pact with Infosys
Karnataka Bank has announced its strategic technology partnership with Infosys to revamp the bank's existing IT infrastructure with software solutions from Infosys. In the first stage, the bank would replace its existing decentralised branch automation systems with the new generation centralised core banking solution from Infosys, Karnataka Bank chairman M S Krishna Bhat told reporters. Initially, he said, the bank would go in for a fully-centralised implementation of Infosys banking solution at its top 50 branches.