While addressing media persons on Tuesday, Mr Arun Jain, chairman and managing director of Polaris said it is a definitive step by Polaris to catapult itself into the global league in the banking and financial services (BFSI) product arena.

The company has also set up an exclusive business and development unit in Noida with around 100 employees to work on future versions and new technologies for value-added products. "BankWare team of over 100 professionals is focused towards rolling out latest banking software products. The manpower composition of the unit, with a 30:70 ratio of domain and technical experts, ensures complete customer focus to all products that are rolled out from this unit," said Mr Jain. The BankWare team is based in the company's Banking Product Development Centre in Noida.

Mr Jain said, "this launch symbolise Polaris' move from the services arena, which has been our traditional stronghold, to product development". BankWare is a natural migration path for Polaris, which has credentials in the banking space earned by executing mission critical projects for prestigious clients like Citigroup, NEC, HP and Westpace Bank over the last 13 years.

Polaris has sourced the framework of the BankNow, the core banking product suite from a US software company, Marshall & Isley (M&I). Many features has been added to the core product and other allied products have been developed by Polaris to build the software suit, said Mr Jain adding that the Intellectual Property Rights of the product and brand name are with Polaris.

Under the business agreement with M&I, Polaris will sell the product in Asian, Mid-East and European market and will pay the royalty to M&I for their product framework. In return, M&I will market the product in the US market and will pay the royalty to Polaris for the value-added product.

BankWare, consist of BankNow, a retail banking product having modules such as Collect Now, LoanNow and DepositNow along with many other products such as BankWise, eNow (Internet banking), WapNow (mobile banking) and CallNow (call centre solution). l