The organisation has been playing a key role in catalysing the development of IT industry in the country. Some of the very successful names like Pentafour and SSI owe their growth to ITCOT. However, it has been hesitant to jump into the IT band wagon of Y2K, euro conversion etc. But now it is way ahead in foreseeing the future business opportunities in the emerging e-com and e-biz consulting and has developed skills to spearhead the new business paradigm, according to managing director V Krishnan.

``With the advent of the new economy comprising Internet, e-commerce, e-business etc, the IT market is both rewarding and intimidating. In a word full of jargons, complex strategies, great success and imminent failures, the prospective new entrant needs a partner who has the rare combination of business and IT skills. ITCOT has precisely this right competency mix.

Besides this, the organisation is neutral to the various IT vendors and hence can evaluate and select the products and solutions best suited to the project without bias or favour for any,'' he said.

The services ITCOT proposes to offer in e-com and e-biz are: business strategy and design for corporates, buck-end integration for e-com, portal design and deployment, technology impact assessment, and e-com, e-biz implementation audit.

Over the years ITCOT has acquired deep knowledge and various IT skills. Its existing activities cover ideas and feasibility reports for IT projects, IT-enabled services, marketing of software products, customising of application packages at different locations, back office operations for banks and insurance sectors, sourcing tie-ups overseas for specific software projects. ITCOT also offers business transformation consulting to corporates and government.

Project profile on dot.com biz charted
ITCOT has prepared a project profile on `Dot.com business - an investment opportunity', to help prospective investors harness the vast untapped potential in conducting the business through the Internet. The over 37 million new connections to be provided by WorldTel, Railways among others will open up inestimable opportunities, says R D Vasudevan, vice-president of ITCOT. The project in the report is configured for an investment of Rs 5 crore. Beta testing of a dot.com portal can be done with an initial investment of Rs 3 lakh. Based on the success of the beta test, the dot.com can be upgraded to full-fledged business portal with viable business model.