Alif teams up with India IT firm

BRUNEI'S Alif Technologies is partnering with India's White House Business Solutions to market the local IT player's products overseas.

The two firms yesterday signed a memorandum of agreement formalising the deal.

The deal will allow White House Business Solutions to bring Alif's GPS-based mapping solution titled, Geo Dispatcher, to India, the US, United Kingdom, France, the Middle East and Malaysia.

Mohammed Sadiq M S, White House Business Solutions director of business development, said the deal will show the world that Brunei is capable of producing quality information technology products and solutions.

He said he was confident that it would be easy to market Alif's product as White House already has a global exposure.

"We are sure this product can be launched at existing countries with whom we are already dealing different products because we already have marketing operations in different countries."

He said White House chose to work with Alif over the Geo Dispatcher after seeing how the Bruneian company worked in the last five years. He said White House had deemed Alif's products as "very impressive".

"We are looking for a long lasting relationship between India and Brunei and eventually we will use existing offices and partner networks to promote Brunei.

"We are also planning to promote not just the Geo Dispatcher, but the capability of Brunei and what the country has to offer," said Mohammed.

Basil Matthew George, a technical consultant at Alif Technologies, said: "This is the first stage of the MOA (memorandum of agreement) ... but revenue and selling are yet to be discussed."

He said the pricing and revenue strategy will be bundled with other services. "As it may be too expensive to sell it to consumers, we might sell it as a package solution, for example, to telecom companies where they pay a little more in conjunction with the mobile phone service they sign up for (allowing them to track their phone)," he said.

Basil added that after trying Alif's products, White House Business Solution officials realised marketing them overseas would be a win-win deal for both parties.

A statement from Alif said the firm is also exploring opportunities to penetrate less-developed markets, like Laos, Cambodia and Myanmar, which officials believe would welcome Bruneian IT products and solutions.

"Other markets ... are already developed and we are looking at marketing to ... countries where it is not developed at all and hopefully, with the help of (the Indian firm) we can penetrate these markets," Basil said, citing Brunei's affinity with the the countries through ASEAN.

On a wider scale, White House Business Solutions' Mohammed said Alif's wider global reach could bring foreign investments into Brunei.

"Different countries will focus more on Brunei and this will give them the confidence to invest in locally-made products and they will be looking for more products from here," he said.

He said the deal will encourage other IT start-ups in Brunei. And where there is IT growth, the community and education will change, he said.

"Students have to compete internationally, and this is a starting point once Brunei gets more attention. If you are competing in a global market, you need to produce something that meets the expectations of that market," he said.

He said Brunei's IT industry still has a long way to go, but the steps already taken, especially the initial steps, were impressive.

"Brunei has good resources and potential, which is slowly developing to that of India and China.

"Also, the government backing through the iCentre incubation programme and the overall support will give individual entrepreneurs more interest in going into the IT sector," he said, adding that IT is a mandate for every country's development.

"If Brunei delivers quality IT solutions and products which remain cost-effective like Alif Technologies has done, Brunei can gain international recognition within five years.

"What is needed now is, more production from companies in different domains," he said.

Mohammed added there are no major issues in the information technology sector as the mindset is slowly changing, particularly in terms of competition.

Alif's Geo Dispatcher is an intelligent mapping and data entry system which integrates an interactive, near real-time map display with call handling, dispatching, records and information management.

The Geo Dispatcher also allows users to dispatch resources to incidents, view unit statistic updates, clear units from incidents and incident updates.

Alif Technologies has over 20 years of experience in the field of information and communication technology. It has an offshore software development subsidiary in India.

The company provides solutions such as active and passive RFID (Radio Frequency Identification), tracking solutions, library management system, among others.

White House Business Solutions is a global solution provider offering unique services in the area of software consulting, application development and implementation, software re-engineering and testing and maintenance. It also offers comprehensive business process outsourcing, process improvement, system integration, customisation, end-user services, training, documentation, stringent quality assurance, testing and legacy application migration across platforms. It is part of the White House Group with corporate offices in Chennai, India and sales office around the globe.

The company has more than one million man-hours of experience in developing multimedia rich interactive e-learning content and learning solutions. The Brunei Times