Mumbai: Hexaware Technologies Ltd has entered into a strategic alliance with Borland Software India Pvt Ltd, a subsidiary of Borland Software Corporation, to launch a state-of-the-art centre of excellence at the company's premises in Chennai.

The proposed centre of excellence, to be set up with an Indian partner, is part of Borland's new partner engagement model.

The centre of excellence will serve as a technology incubation hub, and provide training, evaluation software, online learning and conduct technical seminars for software professionals at Hexawar. It will also provide access to the full suite of Borland applications lifecycle management solutions to project directors and managers, delivery heads, analysts, architects and testers at the company.

Under the alliance, the two companies will engage in joint marketing activities, which include joint solutions as well as joint selling and marketing activities. Hexaware will also provide professional services to Borland's customers from time to time.

The company will provide a dedicated team for the centre. The team will undergo an extensive training programme called 'Train the Trainer' and build in-house expertise on Borland technologies. Eventually, the company hopes to train 2,000 software professionals annually.

"Borland's comprehensive suite of solutions complements our emphasis on providing high quality, cost-effective offerings to our customers. The CoE will equip us to conform to Borland's software requirements definition and application lifecycle management (ALM) in the future," said P K Sridharan executive director and president, India operations.

Hexaware is a global provider of IT and process outsourcing services, specialising in large IT applications in real time as well as high-value services around packaged enterprise applications such as SAP and PeopleSoft and has a client base comprising several 'global 1000' organisations. Its onsite-offshore delivery model provides significant cost savings. The company's development centers are assessed at SEI CMMI-Level 5, and are also ISO 9001:2000 and TickIT certified.

For the second quarter ended June 30, 2006, Hexaware Technologies achieved double-digit growth in both revenue and net profit. Revenue from operations was Rs2,06.88 crore ($45.21 million) - surpassing the revenue guidance of $42.5 million - a sequential growth of 17.4 per cent. Net profit of Rs29.77 crore ($6.5 million) - against the net profit guidance of $6 million - a growth of 14.4 per cent over Q1 2006.

Borland is a global leader in platform independent solutions for software delivery optimisation. With more than 1,300 employees worldwide and operations in more than 20 countries, Borland has been serving over 80 per cent of global 2000 companies with best-in-class solutions for over 20 years.

With market-leading software like IDEs-JBuilder and Delphi, and the most widely deployed CORBA infrastructure solutions, VisiBroker, Hexaware has recorded an order book of $50 million.

Borland expects to return to profitability in the fourth-quarter, despite moving deeper into debt on increased sales. Borland saw its net losses increase 6.6 per cent to $19 million while net revenue increased 15 per cent to $76.9 million during its second quarter ended June 30. Borland's revenue beat the company's own expectations for between $73 million and $75 million (revised up from $69 million).