There's no denying the fact that Indian software services have found great acceptance in the international markets. However, that feat is not reflected to the same extent in the domestic arena. In the absence of suitable off-the-shelf enterprise software products, most small and medium enterprises (SMEs) started their automation exercises with their home-grown solutions during the 1980s or 1990s. And even today most of them are still dependent on their in-house recipes, though some have graduated to ready-made solutions-mainly for enterprise resource planning-to usher in technology for their business processes. But largely, the demand-supply equation is not quite balanced. While the demand is for cutting-edge, -economical solutions that don't consume internal corporate resources, allowing enterprises to focus on their core business objectives, vendors have not been able to meet this demand. Either their solutions are too expensive or redundant for SME business needs. Since the level of handholding and support too is not quite satisfactory, enterprises are generally reluctant to buy software services from vendors.

So now there's a need for vendors to frame customized strategies for the niche market segments particularly targeting the SME sector. While strong channel networks spread across the regions-covering even smaller towns-can deliver the goods, the solutions should be affordable, easy to deploy, use, and manage. Only then, the benefits of IT ripple out across the entire industrial sector in the country.

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